Two Dissertations · §476 · John Davenant

Cap. VI Arg. 9: Prosper on infants; Grevinchovius — if eternal life, then election

Prosper agrees (On Free Choice): in infants neither prior nor later devotion is chosen — he means those reborn as soon as born, and snatched from this life into eternal beatitude. Grevinchovius (Disputation on Election from foresighted faith, p. 143), caught by this, finally doubts whether there is any infant election at all. But whoever has eternal life surely has election to eternal life — the glorified do not outnumber the predestined. Whom he predestined, them he glorified, and no others (so Augustine on the Apostle). Sound Prosper: none enter Christ's inheritance but those elected before the world's foundation, predestined and foreknown according to his purpose. If some infants receive the heavenly inheritance, those same are predestined or elect.

Latin

Cui suffragatur Prosper in lib. De libero arbitrio: In infantibus nec praecedens eligitur nec secutura devotio. De his loquor qui mox ut nati sunt renascuntur, et rapti ab hac vita aeternae beatitudini deputantur. Grevinchovius in Disputatione de Electione ex fide praevisa, pag. 143, hoc argumento irretitus, eo tandem delabitur, ut in dubium vocet utrum sit ulla infantium electio necne. Sed quorum est vita aeterna, illorum proculdubio est electio ad vitam aeternam, cum numerus glorificatorum numerum praedestinatorum sive electorum non excedat. Nam quos praedestinavit glorificavit, et non alios, ut recte Augustinus illum locum Apostoli exposuit. Sic sanus Prosper: Non alii venient in consortium haereditatis Christi, quam qui ante constitutionem mundi electi sunt, et praedestinati atque praesciti secundum propositum ejus, qui omnia operatur secundum consilium voluntatis suae. Si ergo quidam infantes haereditate caelesti donantur, iidem etiam praedestinantur sive eliguntur.

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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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