Two Dissertations · §577 · John Davenant

Cap. IX Arg. 1 Resp.: Bannes and Lombard — praeterition manifests liberty in dispensing supernatural goods

Bannes puts it well: this praeterition or reprobation of some persons, others being elect, manifests the greatest liberty the divine will has in dispensing supernatural goods (on ST I, q. 23 a. 5, p. 293). Nor is it alien to divine wisdom — as with his other attributes — to manifest this attribute of liberty in dispensing the highest good to men. So Lombard (Sentences 1, dist. 41): God reprobated whom he willed, not for future merits he foresaw — yet by a most right truth, remote from our senses. So much for the Major.

Latin

Recte Bannes, Haec praeteritio sive reprobatio aliquarum personarum, aliis electis, est manifestativa maximae libertatis quam habet Divina voluntas circa dispensationem bonorum supernaturalium, In 1. quaest. 23. art. 5. pag. 293. Jam vero haud alienum est a sapientia Divina, sicuti et reliqua sua attributa, ita et hoc libertatis attributum in summo bono dispensando hominibus manifestare. Unde Lombardus, lib. 1. dist. 41, Reprobavit Deus quos voluit, non propter futura merita quae praevideret, veritate tamen rectissima, a nostris sensibus remota. Haec de Majore.

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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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