Two Dissertations · §661 · John Davenant

Cap. IX Arg. 12 Sol: schoolmen — four conditions for certainty of obtaining; praying for another does not always obtain; Major fails that requires certain faith prayers will profit others

This is common knowledge in the School of Theologians. They say four conditions are required for a prayer to have certainty of obtaining; one is that one pray for oneself. For though the prayer be pious, persevering, and about things that belong to salvation, yet if it is made for another it does not always obtain. So the Major falters: it falsely assumes prayers cannot rightly be made for others unless certain faith is present that they will profit them. Nor is our doctrine of reprobation refuted by saying that, once posited, public prayers cannot be offered to God with faith that they would profit all who hear the Word.

Latin

Vulgo hoc notum est in Schola Theologorum, qui dicere solent, quatuor conditiones requiri ut oratio alicujus habeat certitudinem impetrandi, quarum una est, ut pro se quis oret. Nam licet sit pia, perseverans, et de pertinentibus ad salutem, tamen si pro alio fiat non semper impetrat oratio. Major itaque propositio, uti videtis, labascit, quae falso supponit preces recte fieri non posse pro aliis, nisi adsit certa fides, quod sint iisdem profuturae. Nec potest nostra de reprobatione doctrina inde refutari, quod ea posita sequatur publicas preces non posse Deo offerri cum fide quod prodessent omnibus verbum Dei audientibus.

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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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