Two Dissertations · §556 · John Davenant

Cap. VIII Arg.: if God elects and reprobates without cause from men, he is acceptor of persons (Acts 10:34)

Argument: if from eternity God elected some and reprobated others without a cause holding on the human side, then he would be an acceptor of persons. For he seems an acceptor of persons who, when two are equal, gives to one what he denies the other. But that respect of persons is removed from God (Acts 10:34).

Latin

Si Deus aliquos eligeret ab aeterno, aliquos reprobaret, absque causa se tenente ex parte hominum, tunc esset acceptor personarum. Videtur enim esse acceptor personarum, qui, duobus existentibus aequalibus, uni dat quod alteri denegat. Haec autem προσωπολημψία a Deo removetur, Actor. x. 34.

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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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