Two Dissertations · §54 · John Davenant

Cap. 5 Mem. 2 Fathers: Augustine — redemption profits only when it is drunk

Augustine will follow Ambrose. He writes thus in the reply to the article falsely imposed on him, reply 1: Those who pass through this age without the faith of Christ, and without the sacrament of regeneration, are aliens to redemption. A little later: The property of redemption is with those from whom the prince of this world has been cast out. At length he adds: The passion or death of Christ has in itself that it profits all; but if it is not drunk, it does not profit.

All of which utter that Ambrosian sentence — If you do not believe, he did not suffer for you — in still other words. For that phrase, they are aliens to redemption, hints at nothing else than that those who have not yet believed are by no means sharers of the remission of sins and of reconciliation with God.

So also the property of redemption denotes the acquired and as-it-were possessed fruit of redemption, and declares that same fruit to be with believers and the regenerate alone. Finally those words of Augustine — if it is not drunk, it does not profit — plainly prove that the usefulness overflowing from Christ’s death is derived to singular persons only by drinking, that is, by believing.

These things, all and each, overturn the sentence of those who state that either all human beings promiscuously, or the predestinate by a special quasi-privilege, by this alone — that Christ suffered on the cross for them — are restored into the state of grace and of actual reconciliation with God.

Latin

Ambrosium subsequetur Augustinus, qui sic scribit, in resp. ad artic. sibi falso imposit. resp. 1. Qui hoc saeculum sine fide Christi, & sine regenerationis sacramento pertranseunt, redemtionis alieni sunt. Paulo post, Redemtionis proprietas penes illos est, de quibus princeps hujus mundi missus est foras. Tandem addit, Passio sive mors Christi habet in se ut omnibus prosit; sed si non bibitur, non proficit. Quae omnia Ambrosianam illam sententiam, Si non credis, tibi passus non est, aliis atque aliis verbis enunciant. Nam illud, redemtionis alieni sunt, nil aliud innuit, quam minime participes esse remissionis peccatorum, & reconciliationis cum Deo, qui nondum crediderunt. Sic etiam redemtionis proprietas acquisitum & quasi possessum fructum redemtionis denotat, eundemque penes solos credentes & regeneratos esse declarat. Denique illa Augustini verba, si non bibitur, non proficit, plane evincunt, utilitatem ex morte Christi redundantem non nisi bibendo, id est, credendo, ad singulares personas derivari. Haec omnia & singula evertunt illorum sententiam qui statuunt, sive omnes homines promiscue, sive praedestinatos speciali quasi privilegio, hoc ipso solo quod Christus in cruce passus est pro illis, in statum gratiae, & actualis reconciliationis apud Deum restitui.

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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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