Two Dissertations · §668 · John Davenant

Cap. IX Arg. 13 Sol: even if some ministers grew sluggish, the doctrine is not thereby false — abuse of Paul's teaching and of divine foresight (Augustine's monk) does not silence truth

I answer: even if some ministers grew sluggish from it, that does not make the doctrine itself false or evil. From Paul's teaching some took occasion for license, saying, Let us do evil that good may come. From the doctrine of divine foresight, Augustine tells of a monk who, when the brethren corrected him for doing what he should not and leaving undone what he should, answered again and again: Whatever I am now, I shall one day be what God foresaw I would be. That monk spoke truth — and used that truth not for good but for evil. For such little objections, then, what is truly said of predestination and reprobation is neither to be denied nor kept silent.

Latin

Respondeo, etsi inde ministri nonnulli segnes redderentur, non tamen efficitur doctrinam in se falsam aut malam esse. Ex Pauli doctrina nonnulli captabant occasionem licentiae, dicentes, Faciamus mala ut veniant bona. Ex doctrina praescientiae Divinae, fuit quidam Monachus (referente Augustino) qui corripientibus fratribus cum quaedam non facienda faceret, et facienda non faceret, identidem respondebat, Qualiscunque nunc sim, talis olim ero qualem me Deus futurum esse praescivit. Ille Monachus et verum dicebat, et hoc vero non proficiebat in bonum, sed in malum. Propter hujusmodi igitur objectiunculas ea quae de praedestinatione ac reprobatione vera dicuntur, nec neganda sunt, nec tacenda.

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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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