Two Dissertations · §478 · John Davenant

Cap. VI Arg. 10: comparative election and rejection — an inscrutable abyss

In comparative election and rejection of men there is an inscrutable abyss — a secret no human curiosity may pry into. Brought back to the sums of human reason, it would look like injustice: of two wholly equal, one is destined to life by God's gracious good pleasure, the other left.

Latin

In comparativa electione et rejectione hominum est abyssus quaedam inscrutabilis, et arcanum nulla humana curiositate pulsandum. Nam si ad rationis humanae calculos revocaretur, injustitiae speciem prae se ferret, quod ex duobus prorsus aequalibus unus gratioso beneplacito Dei ad vitam destinatur, alter relinquitur.

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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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