Two Dissertations · §502 · John Davenant

Cap. VII: first rock — creating some to destroy; Prosper and Hos. 13:9

First rock: striking divine Goodness — those who teach God by absolute primary will, before any regard to sin, created some in order to destroy them, and that from that destroying will flows whatever God does about the those not chosen. With Prosper we rather say: one cause for being born, another is the Creator's benefit; perishing is the transgressor's desert. God does create those he foresaw would never share eternal life; those he decreed to use free choice with no special grace undergirding it; those he decreed most justly to subject to damnation for sins. Yet that perdition or damnation is not creation's end but transgression's wage — so Hosea may always stand: Your destruction is from you (Hos. 13:9).

Latin

Unus, quo impingitur in Bonitatem Divinam; in quam illi peccare videntur, qui docent Deum absoluta primaria voluntate, omnem peccati considerationem antecedente, quosdam creasse ut perderet: atque ex hac perdendi voluntate putant dimanare quicquid circa non-electos a Deo agitur. Nos cum Prospero potius dicendum arbitramur, Aliam esse nascendi, aliam pereundi causam: Ut nascantur homines, Conditoris esse beneficium; ut pereant, praevaricatoris esse meritum. Creantur quidem a Deo, quos praevidit aeternae vitae participes nunquam fore; creantur, quos decrevit suo libero arbitrio, idque speciali gratia minime fulto, uti; creantur denique, quos decrevit propter peccata justissime damnationi subjicere. Perditio interim haec sive damnatio non finis creationis, sed merces transgressionis aestimanda est — ut semper stet illud Dei apud Hoseam, Perditio tua ex te, Hos. xiii. 9.

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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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