Two Dissertations · §569 · John Davenant

Cap. VIII: Corvinus with Arminius — reprobation only from personal rejection of offered grace

With Arminius he therefore holds this: God always reprobates particular persons from their own personal rejection of offered grace. In the reprobation decree, on that view, he has rejected or passed by no one except as actually unbelieving and impenitent against God who is actually calling. Nor in Adam's fall has he left anyone by absolute ordination alone, or decreed to damn for original sin only.

Latin

Is igitur cum Arminio statuit, Deum singulares personas semper reprobare ex personali earundem propria gratiae oblatae rejectione; ita ut nec in decreto reprobationis quenquam rejecerit aut praeterierit nisi consideratum ut actu infidelem et impenitentem contra Deum actu vocantem, nec in Adae lapsu quenquam ex absoluta sua ordinatione reliquerit, aut propter solum originale peccatum damnare decreverit.

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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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