Two Dissertations · §463 · John Davenant

Cap. VI Arg. 7: ancient Semi-Pelagians owned the sequitur — Faustus on free choice

The old Semi-Pelagians saw that sequitur and taught it openly as no absurdity. Faustus (On Free Choice 1): a man's state can turn this way or that not by God's constitution but by free choice. And 1.20: what God is to foreknow and preordain about us for the future consists in man's progress or failure.

Latin

Antiqui Semipelagiani viderunt hoc necessario sequi ex praedicta sententia, atque idcirco tanquam nihil absurdi in se haberet, hoc palam docuerunt. Sic Faustus De lib. arbit. lib. 1. Status hominis in diversa, non pro constitutione Dei, sed pro arbitrii libertate potest versari. Et libro 1. cap. 20. Quid de nobis praescire ac praeordinare debeat Deus, quantum pertinet ad futurum, in profectu hominis defectuque consistit.

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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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