Two Dissertations · §640 · John Davenant

Cap. IX Arg. 9 Sol close: God creates in time those not predestined to beatitude — creation's proper end is communication of good, not damnation as intended scope

So God creates in time those he from eternity did not predestine to beatitude — whom he foresaw would by their own fault rush to voluntary ruin, whom he decreed to permit to fall into this everlasting misery. Yet men's creation (which in the order of decreeing preceded all that) had its own proper end: God's glory in the diffusion and communication of good — not their damnation, which is to be held an event following the creation of the reprobate, not a scope intended by God as creator.

Latin

Creat ergo Deus in tempore, quos ab aeterno minime praedestinavit ad beatitudinem, quos praevidit sua culpa ad interitum ruituros voluntarium, quos decrevit permittere ut inciderent in hanc miseriam sempiternam: sed interim creatio hominum (quae ordine decernendi haec omnia praecessit) habuit proprium suum finem, Dei gloriam in diffusione ac communicatione boni, non damnationem eorundem, quae habenda est eventus consequens creationem reprobatorum, non scopus intentus a Deo creante.

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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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