Two Dissertations · §628 · John Davenant

Cap. IX Arg. 8: absolute reprobation not from foresight of actual sins makes God deal more rigidly with some men than with the very devils

Those who hold that God by mere will — not from foresight of actual sins and final perseverance in them — has reprobated some, thereby hold that God deals far more rigidly with certain men than with the very devils. For the devils are shut out of life for sins they committed by their own malice; yet some reprobated men are set not for sins done in their own persons, but only as guilty by divine imputation of Adam's alien sin.

Latin

Qui statuunt Deum mera sua voluntate, et non ex praevisione actualium peccatorum et finalis perseverantiae in iisdem, quosdam reprobasse, illi statuunt Deum longe rigidius agere cum hominibus quibusdam, quam cum ipsis diabolis: Cum enim diaboli excludantur a vita ob peccata quae propria sua malitia commiserunt, homines quidam reprobati ponuntur, non propter propria peccata quae in personis suis commiserunt, sed tantum considerati uti alieno peccato Adami ex imputatione Divina rei.

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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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