Two Dissertations · §462 · John Davenant

Cap. VI Arg. 7: from the absurdity — election suspended on human faith yields no fixed elect number

Seventh argument: from the absurdity their view labors under — hanging divine election on a prior act of human faith and perseverance. Then neither the formal nor the material number of the elect would be fixed by any decree of divine good pleasure; that these particular persons are saved, and in this fixed count, would be an accident of contingent human choice — God foreseeing, not preordaining.

Latin

Septimo, argumentamur ab inconveniente vel absurdo, quo laborat haec eorum sententia qui suspendunt actum electionis Divinae ex praeeunte actu fidei ac perseverantiae humanae. Hinc enim sequeretur, nec formalem nec materialem numerum electorum esse certum ac definitum secundum decretum aliquod beneplaciti Divini, sed quod hae singulares personae, et hoc definito numero, salventur, id per accidens evenisse, ex contingente nimirum actu arbitrii humani, Deo praevidente, non praeordinante.

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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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