Two Dissertations · §514 · John Davenant

Cap. VIII: prefatory — not the will to damn, but the eternal denial of efficacious grace

Before their reasons are brought forward, this must be prefaced: we are not asking about reprobation as some theologians mean the will to damn or torment the reprobate — that will of God always regards sin as meritorious cause of decreed punishment, beyond dispute. We ask about reprobation as that absolute eternal decree by which from eternity God denied Cain and Judas efficacious grace he could have prepared and given them, had he so willed

Latin

Sed priusquam horum rationes in medium afferantur, id praestruendum est: Non quaeri de reprobatione, quatenus denotat apud nonnullos Theologos voluntatem damnandi sive cruciandi reprobatos: Nam extra controversiam esse debet, hanc voluntatem Dei semper respicere peccatum ut meritoriam causam decretae punitionis. Sed quaeritur de reprobatione, quatenus denotat absolutum illud et aeternum Dei decretum, quo negavit ab aeterno Caino et Judae efficacem gratiam, quam illis praeparare et dare potuisset, si ita illi complacitum fuisset.

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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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