Two Dissertations · §59 · John Davenant

Cap. 5 Mem. 2 Obj. 1: If the death is a sufficient ransom, all must already be restored

Either Christ's death was a sufficient ransom to wipe away the sins of the human race and put every human being back into grace and reconciliation, or it was insufficient. Call it insufficient, and we diminish divine grace and trample Christ's merit. Grant that it was sufficient, and then—once that sufficient cause has been put into act—nothing else is required to bring about the effect. From Christ's very act of offering himself to God, therefore, there would follow at once the universal liberation of all people from the guilt of their sins, and a universal reconciliation: that is, the reception of everyone into divine grace.

Latin

Christi mors aut sufficiens fuit λυτρον ad dispungenda peccata humani generis, omnesque homines in statum gratiae & reconciliationis reponendos, aut insufficiens. Si statuatur insufficiens, gratiam Divinam extenuamus, & meritum Christi indigne conculcamus. Si agnoscatur sufficiens, tum posita causa sufficienti in actu, nihil aliud requiritur ad effectum inducendum. Ex ipso igitur actu Christi seipsum Deo offerentis statim sequatur universalis liberatio omnium hominum a reatu peccatorum suorum, & universalis reconciliatio, sive receptio omnium hominum in gratiam Divinam.

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About this text

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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