Two Dissertations · §630 · John Davenant

Cap. IX Arg. 8 Sol first: from Arminian concessions — if all are made guilty of eternal death by Adam's imputed act alone, God deals more rigidly with men than with demons

First I answer: from Arminian concessions we can weave a like argument, which they themselves will doubtless call of no moment. Note this: though they constantly deny anyone is damned for innate original sin, they are forced the other way — they grant that guilt of death has been derived even to all infants from imputation of that actual sin Adam committed. Grant only that, and we may argue: those who hold God puts all men, infants and adults, under strict right as guilty of eternal death merely because a sin not done in each one's own person but by Adam is imputed to them, make God deal more rigidly with men than with demons. No demon is counted guilty except for sin done in his own person from his own malice; yet on Arminius's view men are made guilty of eternal death only as guilty by divine imputation of Adam's alien sin. Whatever reply they give us, we will turn the same back on them.

Latin

Respondeo primo, Posse nos ex concessis Arminianorum non dissimile argumentum texere, quod tamen nullius momenti esse ipsi proculdubio affirmabunt. Nam illud notandum est: Quamvis constanter negent ob innatum peccatum originale damnari quenquam, tamen e contrario coguntur illorum capita, agnoscunt mortis reatum etiam in parvulos omnes esse derivatum ex imputatione actualis ejus peccati quod ab Adamo admissum fuit. Hoc itaque solummodo concesso sic licet nobis argumentari: Qui statuunt Deum omnes homines, tam infantes quam adultos, aeternae mortis reos in strictum jus conferre, ex eo solum quod imputatur illis peccatum quod non actuale in propria uniuscujusque persona commissum, sed ab Adamo perpetratum, illi faciunt Deum rigidius agentem cum hominibus quam cum diabolis: Nam nemo diabolorum reus censetur nisi ob peccatum in propria persona, et ex propria malitia commissum; at homines, ex sententia Arminii, rei mortis aeternae constituuntur, tantum considerati uti alieni peccati Adami ex imputatione Divina rei. Quicquid responsi nobis dederint, idem nos et illis regeremus.

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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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