Two Dissertations · §609 · John Davenant

Cap. IX vocatione Sol cont.: 'precise/absolute elect cannot be commanded to believe' misreads absolute election as cutting off means

They also put it that the precisely or absolutely elect or reprobate cannot be commanded to believe. Take that in their sense of people elected to salvation so precisely that means drop out — as if God had decreed to bring some to salvation even though they reject every means of it, or to damn some even though they believe in Christ. That is not our dogma. It is their dream forced onto ours.

Latin

Porro quod in argumento positum fuit, Precise sive absolute electis aut reprobis non posse mandari ut credant, si eo sensu accipiunt precise et absolute ad salutem electos, ut praescindant ab usu mediorum, quasi Deus decrevisset aliquos ad salutem perducere etiamsi media salutis rejiciant, aut aliquos damnare, etiamsi in Christum crediderint, pro nostro dogmate sua insomnia obtrudunt.

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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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