Two Dissertations · §517 · John Davenant

Cap. VIII Arg. 1: Scripture — God does not will that men perish

First they try to prove reprobation flows from foresighted human demerits from those Scripture places where God is said not to will that men perish — which would hardly be true, they say, if God by his will alone, and not for sins, reprobated so great a multitude. They cite Ezek. 18:23 (Is the death of the wicked of my will?), Hos. 13:9 (Your destruction is from you), 1 Tim. 2:4 (God wills all to be saved), Matt. 11:28 (Come to me, all), and many like places — no need to repeat or discuss them one by one.

Latin

Reprobationem igitur fluere ex praevisis hominum demeritis, primo probare conantur nonnulli ex illis Scripturae locis, in quibus Deus dicitur nequaquam velle ut homines pereant: Quod minime verum esset, si Deus sola sua voluntate, et non propter peccata, tantam hominum multitudinem reprobaret. Huc afferunt illud Ezek. xviii. 23, Nunquid voluntatis meae est mors impii? et Hos. xiii. 9. Perditio tua ex te. Item illud Apostoli, 1 Tim. ii. 4. Deus vult omnes salvos fieri. Et illud Servatoris, Matth. xi. 28. Venite ad me omnes; ejusque generis loca alia quamplurima, quae sigillatim repetere aut discutere non est necesse.

Report a mistake in this passage

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.

Printed text used

Also checked PDF of the 1650 (Latin · print facsimile)
Also checked DjVu machine-read text of the 1650 (Latin)

We have not yet re-checked this work against its source. We made this study translation with AI help. No scholar has yet certified it as faithful and complete. Open Latin on any section, or the Latin source link, to see the source text. It is not a critical edition.

Report a mistake