Two Dissertations · §534 · John Davenant

Cap. VIII Arg. 6 Resp.: negative (Scotus permissive) vs punitive reprobation — if the latter, we grant

To clear all this, recall first: we are treating the reprobation theologians call negative — which Scotus calls permissive (Sentences 1, dist. 41, q. 1) — not the positive or punitive kind. Negative reprobation, so taken, means only God's eternal purpose not to grant certain particular persons some gratuitous, not owededed, special benefit by which, if granted, they would be softened, converted, and infallibly led to eternal life. Positive reprobation means God's eternal purpose to punish certain persons with eternal death for the sins they will commit, and from which they are foresighted as not to be freed. If adversaries mean that latter decree, we freely grant: the eternal decree of predamnation tends to no one except as bound by sin's guilt. God wills to save the miserable without their merits, because he is good; he does not will to damn or punish innocents without demerits, because he is just.

Latin

Ut haec omnia diluantur, primo in memoriam revocandum est, nos agere de reprobatione illa, quam Theologi vocant negativam; quam Scotus permissivam appellat, in Sentent. lib. 1, dist. 41, quaest. 1; non de illa quam positivam sive punitivam licet appellare. Prior ita considerata dicit solummodo Dei propositum aeternum de non-concedendo singularibus quibusdam personis gratuitum quoddam, indebitum, et speciale beneficium, quo concesso emollirentur, converterentur, et ad vitam aeternam infallibiliter perducerentur. Posterior dicit aeternum Dei propositum de quibusdam personis morte aeterna puniendis ob peccata illa quae perpetrabunt, et a quibus minime liberandi praevidentur. Si ad hoc posterius decretum respiciant adversarii, ultro largimur, hoc aeternum praedamnationis decretum non tendere in quenquam, nisi ea ratione quod peccati reatu constringatur. Nam licet Deus velit servare miseros absque ullis eorum meritis, quia bonus est, non tamen vult damnare aut punire innocentes absque ullis demeritis, quia justus est.

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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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