Two Dissertations · §659 · John Davenant

Cap. IX Arg. 12 (Corvinus): absolute reprobation blocks public prayers offered with due faith that the Word will profit all hearers

They do not rightly explain reprobation who set such a reprobation as would block public prayers from being offered to God with due faith and confidence that the Word will profit all who hear it. Who can bring himself to pray for the salvation of those God by an eternal antecedent will has willed to damn? The Apostle sharpens us to pray for all with this argument: God wills all to be saved.

Latin

Isti non recte explicant doctrinam reprobationis, qui talem statuunt reprobationem, quae impediat quo minus publicae preces Deo offerri possint cum debita fide et fiducia quod omnibus verbum Dei audientibus sint profutura. Nam quis animum inducere potest ut pro eorum salute oret, quos Deus aeterna et antecedente voluntate damnare voluit? Apostolus hoc argumento nos acuit ad precandum pro omnibus, quia Deus vult omnes salvos fieri.

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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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