Two Dissertations · §469 · John Davenant

Cap. VI Arg. 8: second — efficacious means only from intention of the end; 1 Pet. 1:5

Second: perseverance is given only to one already elected and destined to eternal life. An agent who knows what means can do never prepares and gives infallibly efficacious means except from purpose and desire of the end. So Peter: by God's power you are kept through faith unto salvation (1 Pet. 1:5). God inspires faith, keeps it from going out, and does so that through faith we may be led to salvation. All to whom he decreed persevering faith had salvation most certain with God.

Latin

Secundo, perseverantiam non donari aut destinari nisi ad vitam aeternam electo et destinato, inde clarum est, quod ab agente qui vim et efficaciam mediorum intelligit, media ad finem consequendum infallibiliter efficacia nunquam praeparantur et donantur cuiquam nisi ex proposito et desiderio finis. Huc spectant illa Petri verba, virtute Dei custodimini per fidem ad salutem, 1 Petr. i. 5. Deus inspirat fidem cordibus nostris, inspiratam custodit ne exstinguatur, atque idcirco hoc facit, ut per fidem perducamur ad salutem. Salus igitur eorum omnium fuit apud Deum certissima, quibus fidem perseverantem dare decrevit.

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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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