Two Dissertations · §636 · John Davenant

Cap. IX Arg. 9 Sol: eternal non-election no more fights temporal creation than angelic passing-over fought angelic creation — greater difficulty with angels, seen intact

We deny the Major's consequence. God's eternal decree concerning certain men not to be elected, or to be reprobated, can no more fight their temporal creation than the passing-by or non-election of some angels — set from eternity by mere liberty of divine will — fought angelic creation. Indeed the difficulty seems greater with angels than with men. Men from eternity elect or passed by were shown to the divine mind as vitiated in a corrupt mass and reprobable; but God looked on the angels intact in the same perfection in which he later made them. So if eternal reprobation of certain angels sprung from divine good pleasure, not from foresight of sin, and in no way fought their creation, no fight can rightly be conceived between reprobation and creation of men, who are set before God reprobating as contaminated and slain by Adam's sin.

Latin

Negamus consequentiam Majoris. Nam aeternum Dei decretum de non-eligendis, sive reprobandis hominibus quibusdam non magis pugnare potest cum temporali eorundem creatione, quam cum Angelorum creatione pugnavit quorundam praeteritio sive non-electio, ex mera libertate voluntatis Divinae ab aeterno constituta. Imo major videtur difficultas in causa Angelorum quam hominum; Homines enim ab aeterno electi aut praeteriti repraesentabantur menti Divinae ut in massa corrupta vitiati, et reprobabiles; at Angelos integros Deus intuitus est in eadem perfectione, in qua eos postea condidit: Si igitur aeterna reprobatio quorundam Angelorum ex beneplacito Divino, et non ex peccati praevisione, orta minime pugnavit cum creatione eorundem, non potest recte concipi pugna ulla inter reprobationem et creationem hominum, qui Deo reprobanti objiciuntur, ut peccato Adae contaminati et occisi.

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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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