Two Dissertations · §496 · John Davenant

Cap. VI Arg. 13: sounder scholastics — willing to receive grace is from predestination

Even the more reliable scholastics, who usually overemphasize free choice, dare not reduce the split between elect and passed-by to good or bad use of free choice in embracing or rejecting grace. So Aquinas (Disputed Questions on Predestination, art. 2): this very willing to receive grace is from divine predestination. And Durandus (p. 250): every good done by someone, or that helps him reach the supernatural end — whether as cause or occasion — falls under predestination's effect.

Latin

Quinetiam ipsi Scholastici saniores, qui plus aequo tribuere solent humano arbitrio, tamen non audent electorum et praeteritorum discrimen ad bonum et malum usum liberi arbitrii in gratia amplexanda vel repellenda revocare. Unde Thomas, Qu. disp. de praed. art. 2: Hoc ipsum velle accipere gratiam est ex praedestinatione Divina. Et Durandus, pag. 250: Omne bonum quod fit ab aliquo, vel quod juvat eum ad consecutionem finis supernaturalis, sive per causam, sive per occasionem, cadit sub effectu praedestinationis.

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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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