Two Dissertations · §664 · John Davenant

Cap. IX Arg. 12 Sol: we add what they hide — God wills hearers saved if they believe, yet wills not to soften all so they believe; pray for all, treat none as reprobate

But we add what they by obstinate silence wish to hide. God wills to save all who hear the Gospel if they believe and their own pertinacity does not hinder them. Yet he does not will to have mercy on all so far that they are softened, believe, and cease to hinder themselves — but on the elect only. He wills to permit that others by their own fault be hardened and remain in voluntary pertinacity. Because it is unknown to us of whom he wills to have mercy, and whom he wills to leave to their own hardness, it is ours to pray for all that they be converted, and to treat no one in particular as reprobate.

Latin

At hoc nos addimus, quod illi obstinato silentio cupiunt occultare, Deum, qui vult omnes Evangelium audientes servare si credant, si sua pertinacia sibi minime obsint, non velle tamen omnium eousque misereri ut emolliantur, et credant, et sua pertinacia sibi non obsint, sed electorum tantum; velle autem permittere ut alii suo vitio indurentur, et in sua voluntaria pertinacia permaneant. Quia vero nobis incognitum est cujus vult misereri, et quem vult suae duritiae relinquere, nostrum est pro omnibus orare, ut convertantur, et neminem singulariter pro reprobato habere.

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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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