Two Dissertations · §454 · John Davenant

Cap. VI Arg. 4: Augustine John 6:45 — special vocation implies antecedent will to save

So Augustine on the predestined and the passed-by, from John 6:45 (Everyone who has heard from the Father and learned comes to me): all these God teaches to come to Christ; all these he wills saved and brought to the knowledge of the truth. Had he also willed to teach those for whom the Cross is foolishness to come to Christ, they too would have come. In this special vocation, then, we must grant a special prior will to save those so called.

Latin

Sic Augustinus de praedestinatis et praeteritis disputans ex illo loco, Omnis qui audivit a Patre, et didicit, venit ad me, Joann. vi. 45: Hos omnes, inquit, docet venire ad Christum Deus, hos omnes vult salvos fieri, et in agnitionem veritatis venire. Nam si illos etiam, quibus stultitia est verbum Crucis, ut ad Christum venirent, docere voluisset, proculdubio venirent et ipsi. In hac igitur speciali vocatione agnoscamus necesse est specialem et antecedentem voluntatem salvandi sic vocatos.

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John Davenant argues from Scripture that Christ's death is a remedy offered to every person, so that anyone who hears the Gospel may be called to believe, and then opens a second dissertation on predestination.

John Davenant (1572–1641) was Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, bishop of Salisbury from 1621, and England's leading delegate to the Synod of Dort. A Reformed theologian of the moderate school, he defended universal atonement language within a Calvinist frame.

The Two Dissertations (1650) press two theses: that Christ died sufficiently for all, and that God sincerely calls all who hear the gospel — against the novel claim that Christ died only for the elect in every sense. They are Davenant's mature statement of the hypothetical-universalist position that divided English Calvinists.

This volume covers the opening of the first dissertation through the close of chapter 3, with the theses on the extent of Christ's death.

Date1572–1641 AD (Bishop of Salisbury; 1650 Cambridge imprint)

The 1683 reprint was not used as base text. No modern English was copied.

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