Two Dissertations · §532 · John Davenant

Cap. VIII Arg. 5 Resp.: remnant according to election (Rom. 11:5, 7); reprobates left to their hardness

Add this: when a nation — say the Jews — is broken off from the Church's body for unbelief, still none of the elect is broken off. By the same Apostle, a remnant according to the election of grace is saved (Rom. 11:5, 7). That some are not broken off while others of the same nation spring back and perish happens not because these were elected from foresighted faith, but because faith was given to these elect from God's eternal good pleasure, and a reservation according to election was made (Rom. 11:5). So too, that some are broken off by their unbelief and perish does not prove God from eternity reprobated them for foresighted unbelief. It proves that these reprobate, left to their hardness, brought forth unbelief — the genuine child of an hardened heart — and through it, broken from the Church's body, perished by their own desert.

Latin

Hisce omnibus accedat, quod cum gens aliqua, puta Judaeorum, ob infidelitatem defracta sit a corpore Ecclesiae, nemo tamen ex electis defringatur: nam, eodem Apostolo autore, reliquiae secundum electionem gratiae salvae factae sunt, Rom. xi. 5, 7. Denique, quod quidam non defringantur, aliis ex eadem gente resilientibus et pereuntibus, id evenit non quia hi electi fuerunt ex praevisa fide sua, sed quia fides data fuit hisce electis ex aeterno Dei beneplacito, et reservatio secundum electionem facta est, Rom. xi. 5. Sic etiam quod quidam defringantur, mediante sua infidelitate, et pereant, id non arguit Deum eos ab aeterno reprobasse propter praevisam infidelitatem; sed quod hi reprobati duritiae suae derelicti infidelitatem, quae cordis obdurati genuinam prolem pepererunt, et per eam a corpore Ecclesiae defracti suo merito perierunt.

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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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