Two Dissertations · §522 · John Davenant

Cap. VIII Arg. 2 Resp.: demerit frees from cruelty charge, not motive of Jacob/Esau discrimination

Note also: we gladly grant that in the reprobate subject there resides that contagion and unworthiness which can free the reprobating God not only from cruelty and injustice, but even from the lightest suspicion of them. Whoever is denied this special mercy had no right that such grace be prepared or conferred. What is owed by no reason is reasonably denied — so Thomas. Add that he not only has no right to such a benefit, but by inborn vice is as it were proximately disposed to receive God's vengeance (Augustine, Against two Letters of the Pelagians 2.7). The state of the whole human race as presented to God electing and passing by is a state of sin, death, and merited damnation. But since that state is common to all and wraps Jacob as much as Esau, it can stand as a congruent reason why God may justly leave both — not as the moving cause why he rejected Esau while electing Jacob, who stood in the same condition. Hence Dionysius the Carthusian calls it intolerable that foresight of demerits be named the reason of reprobation.

Latin

Porro et illud notandum est, nos libenter agnoscere, in subjecto reprobato residere illam contagionem et indignitatem quae possit Deum reprobantem non modo ab omni crudelitate et injustitia, sed vel a levissima ejus suspicione, liberare. Nam cuicunque negatur haec specialis misericordia, certum est, non habuisse illum jus ad hoc, quod gratia talis ei praeparetur aut conferatur. Rationabiliter autem negatur quod nulla ratione debetur, ut recte Thomas. Huc accedit, quod non modo nullum jus habet ad tale beneficium, sed est suo insito vitio quasi proxime dispositus ad vindictam Dei excipiendam. Hoc Augustinus optime explicavit, Contra 2. Epist. Pelag. lib. 2, cap. 7. Status enim totius generis humani Deo eligenti et praetereunti repraesentatus, est status peccati, status mortis et meritae damnationis. Verum cum hic status communis sit omnium, tamque Jacobum involvat quam Esavum, potest afferri ut ratio congrua cur Deus utrumque juste possit relinquere, sed non potest commode obtendi ut causa motiva cur Esavum rejecerit, electo Jacobo, qui in eadem fuit conditione. Atque hinc Dionysius Carthusianus intolerabile esse affirmat, ut praescientia demeritorum dicatur ratio reprobationis.

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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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