Two Dissertations · §519 · John Davenant

Cap. VIII Arg. 1 Resp. coda (Vasquez): reprobates excluded from God himself without occasion from demerits

Vasquez the Jesuit — no great friend of our defense — still sides with us here. By that peculiar efficacious grace proper to the predestined, he says, God without doubt excluded all the reprobate from himself by antecedent will, seizing no occasion at all from them. Denial of that grace wholly precedes our liberty. For us that is as good as saying: God from himself, by antecedent will, with no occasion taken from their demerits, passed by or reprobated all the reprobate.

Latin

Vasques Jesuita, qui nostrae defensioni non admodum favet, tamen hac in re nobis suffragatur: Ea gratia, inquit ille, peculiari et efficaci, quae est propria praedestinatorum, Deus absque dubio omnes reprobos ex seipso antecedente voluntate exclusit, nulla prorsus ex ipsis arrepta occasione. Negatio enim hujus gratiae nostram libertatem omnino praecedit. Hoc nobis perinde est ac si dixisset, Deum ex seipso, antecedente voluntate, nulla ex ipsorum demeritis arrepta occasione, omnes reprobos praeteriisse sive reprobasse.

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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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