Two Dissertations · §578 · John Davenant

Cap. IX Arg. 1 Resp. Minor: not all damned as gospel-contumacious; reprobation's cause lies elsewhere

Now the Minor — which is not true if taken universally. Many are damned who are not at all considered by God as contumacious to the Gospel. Example: pagan infants, born children of wrath and not reborn in Christ. Among adults, all those to whom the Gospel never shone nor Christ became known. Arminius even grants that many are damned by the Law alone, not for contempt of the Gospel (Examination of Perkins's Predestination). No need to labor further on the Minor. Whether men are damned for contempt of Gospel or of Law, that the same are reprobated has its cause elsewhere. Finally we grant men are not reprobated without regard to a despised Law or Gospel, because God cannot reprobate anyone except as guilty of sin — but it does not follow from preconsideration of future faith in some and future sin in others. God electing or reprobating foresights from eternity many future things in elect and reprobate that are not moving causes of the act of electing or reprobating.

Latin

Accedamus ad Minorem; quae non est vera, si universaliter intelligatur. Nam multi damnantur, qui ut Evangelio immorigeri minime a Deo considerantur. Exemplo sint infantes Paganorum, qui filii irae nascuntur, et in Christo minime renascuntur. Exemplo etiam esse possunt inter adultos illi omnes, quibus nec Evangelium illuxit unquam, nec Christus innotuit: Quin etiam multos per solam Legem damnari, et non propter Evangelium contemptum, concedit Arminius, Exam. Praedest. Perkins. Sed non est quod ultra laboremus de Minore. Nam sive ob contemptum Evangelii, sive ob contemptum Legis homines damnentur, tamen, quod iidem reprobentur, aliunde causam habet. Denique, damus, homines reprobari non sine consideratione spretæ Legis, aut Evangelii, quia Deus non potest aliquem reprobare, nisi ut peccati reum: sed ex praeconsideratione fidei futurae in aliquibus, et in aliis praeconsideratione peccati futuri, haud consequitur. Multa enim a Deo eligente aut reprobante praevidentur ab aeterno in electis aut reprobatis futura, quae non habent rationem causae motivae ad actum reprobandi vel eligendi.

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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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