Two Dissertations · §672 · John Davenant

Cap. IX Arg. 13 Sol: sloth cannot un-predestinate the elect, yet can harm them many ways — effects/benefits of predestination are to be advanced by ministers' diligence (Thomas)

Finally: no one is so impious, or so unskilled in theology, as to think ministers' sloth can make any of the predestined non-predestined, or make them fall from the glory prepared for them. Yet no one is so foolish as not to see that ministers' sloth can harm any predestined person in many ways. For though the eternal decree of God predestinating is neither procured, helped, nor hindered by any human acts, the effects of predestination — or the benefits prepared for men in it — can and ought to be advanced by ministers' diligence. So Thomas (Part. 1 q.23 a.8): Predestination does not take away second causes, but so provides for the effect that even the order of second causes lies under providence. Ministers therefore ought to know their diligence is subordinated by God to promoting the elect's salvation.

Latin

Denique, quamvis nemo tam impius, aut rei Theologicae imperitus sit, qui cogitet ministrorum socordia quemlibet ex praedestinatis fieri posse non praedestinatum, aut excidere posse gloria praedestinatis praeparata, tamen nemo tam imprudens est, qui non intelligat ministrorum socordiam posse variis modis cuivis praedestinato obesse. Nam licet ipsum aeternum decretum Dei praedestinantis neque procuretur, neque juvetur, neque impediatur ullis actibus humanis, tamen effecta praedestinationis, vel beneficia in praedestinatione hominibus praeparata, possunt et debent ministrorum diligentia promoveri. Unde Thomas, Part. 1. quaest. 23. artic. 8. Praedestinatio non tollit causas secundas, sed sic providet effectui ut etiam ordo causarum secundarum subjaceat providentiae. Ministri igitur scire debent suam diligentiam esse a Deo subordinatam saluti electorum promovendae.

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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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