Two Dissertations · §588 · John Davenant

Cap. IX Resp.: God confers corporal and spiritual benefits on the reprobate — therefore not strict right; false dichotomy with highest mercy

But he often confers on them many corporal and spiritual benefits by which they may be made better; he withdraws nothing owed them, and pours into them nothing by which they are made worse. So he does not deal with them by strict right. Yet the adversaries plead as if between dealing from highest mercy and dealing from highest or strict right there were no middle.

Latin

At confert in eos subinde multa tum corporalia, tum spiritualia beneficia quibus reddantur meliores, et nihil quod illis debitum est subtrahit, nec illis infundit quicquam quo reddantur deteriores. Non igitur stricto jure agit cum illis. Sed adversarii ita hanc causam agunt, quasi inter haec duo, agere ex summa misericordia, et agere ex summo vel stricto jure, nihil esset medium.

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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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