Two Dissertations · §605 · John Davenant

Cap. IX Arg. A vocatione Evangelica: absolute antecedent election/reprobation would make indiscriminate Gospel offers a simulation — therefore reprobation only after foresight of despised grace

From the Gospel call they argue thus. If God by an antecedent absolute decree had elected some and reprobated others, he would be acting with simulation when he offers grace indiscriminately through evangelical ministers. For the elect unto salvation cannot be commanded to believe under hope of obtaining salvation — no one awaits under a condition what he knows is absolutely ordained for him. Nor can the reprobate be commanded to believe — God would then require them to believe a falsehood: that Christ suffered and died for them and obtained life and reconciliation for them. Therefore, they say, no one is reprobated except from regard and foresight of despised grace and final persistence in that hardness of heart and unbelief.

Latin

A vocatione Evangelica sic disputant. Si Deus decreto antecedaneo et absoluto quosdam elegisset, quosdam reprobasset, ageret simulate gratiam offerendo hominibus indiscriminatim per ministros evangelicos. Nam neque precise ad salutem electis mandari potest ut credant sub spe salutis adipiscendae; quia nemo sub conditione exspectat, quod sibi scit absolute ordinatum: neque reprobatis mandari potest ut credant; nam Deus sic exigeret ab eis ut falsum crederent, scilicet Christum pro illis fuisse passum et mortuum, illisque vitam et reconciliationem impetrasse. Ergo statuendum est, neminem reprobari nisi ex consideratione et praevisione spretae gratiae, et finalis permansionis in hac cordis obduratione et infidelitate.

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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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