Two Dissertations · §461 · John Davenant

Cap. VI Arg. 5 close: fourth decree only intuits — so election from good pleasure, not foresight faith

The fourth decree alone touches singular persons — and even it gives certainty only as foreseeing knowledge, not as an operating cause: God does not there resolve to produce faith and perseverance in the elect, but only to regard them as already about to believe and persevere. Where salvation is not certain from God specially and infallibly causing, there is not the election Scripture celebrates. So election hangs on mere good pleasure, not foresighted faith.

Latin

Quartum vero decretum, quod solum de singularibus personis agit, certitudinem salutis non affert per modum causae operantis, sed per modum scientiae praevidentis: quia Deus ibi non statuit fidem et perseverantiam in electis efficaciter producere, sed eosdem tanquam jam credituros et perseveraturos intueri. Ubi igitur nulla est certitudo salutis ex Deo specialiter et infallibiliter causante, ibi non est vera illa electio Scripturis celebrata. Ergo electio pendet ex mero Dei beneplacito, non ex fide praevisa.

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About this text

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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