Two Dissertations · §512 · John Davenant

Cap. VII close: same foundations — refute mixed, then confirm ours; Cap. VIII ahead

Now let us hear by what arguments they prop this view — those who fetch reprobation or praeterition from foresighted demerits, or from unbelief and final perseverance in it. No need to split Jesuit and Arminian arguments carefully: they rest on plainly the same foundations. As they met us in reading, we will set them out mixed. Once refuted, we will turn to confirming our own opinion.

Latin

Jam quibus argumentis hanc suam sententiam fulciant, qui hanc reprobationem sive praeteritionem a praevisis demeritis, vel infidelitate et perseverantia finali in eadem, arcessunt, audiamus. Neque opus est ut accurate distinguantur argumenta Jesuitarum et Arminianorum: nam iisdem plane fundamentis nituntur. Ut igitur inter legendum se nobis obtulerunt, ea mixtim proponemus. Hisce autem refutatis, ad sententiae nostrae confirmationem erit accedendum.

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About this text

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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