Two Dissertations · §511 · John Davenant

Cap. VII: opposing sententiae — Jesuits on foresight sins; Arminians on final unbelief

Those against us hold the contrary: the cause of non-election or reprobation is the sins in which the reprobate are foreseen as about to die. This is the view of certain Jesuits. Others say foresighted unbelief with final perseverance in it is the cause, so that no one is considered by God reprobate or those not chosen except in the very article of death, and that for this contumacious unbelief against God. That is Arminius's view, and of those usually called Remonstrants.

Latin

Qui nobis adversantur e contra statuunt, Causam non-electionis sive reprobationis esse ea peccata in quibus reprobati praevidentur morituri. Atque haec est sententia quorundam Jesuitarum. Alii praevisam infidelitatem cum perseverantia finali in eadem dicunt esse causam reprobationis, ita ut nemo nisi in ipso mortis articulo consideretur a Deo ut reprobatus vel non-electus, idque propter hanc contumacem infidelitatem contra Deum evocantem. Atque haec sententia est Arminii et eorum quos Remonstrantes vocare solent.

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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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