Two Dissertations · §676 · John Davenant

Cap. IX Arg. 14 (Corvinus): second way — reprobation to damnation without gaze on disobedience hates the creature without justice-love and kills hope in God

Second: as they say, it sets God as having predestined some men to damnation without considering disobedience — from which again it follows that God hates his creature with no necessity arising from love of justice. That granted, hope in God is taken away. For whoever is sure he has been reprobated from salvation apart from any gaze on sin will believe nothing can profit him, however hard he strives to avoid sin.

Latin

Secundo, quia (ut illi aiunt) statuit Deus aliquos homines ad damnationem praedestinasse sine intuitu inobedientiae: unde rursus sequitur, Deum creaturam suam odisse citra nullam ex amore erga justitiam necessitatem: Quo posito, tollitur spes in Deum. Qui enim certe sibi persuadet se a salute citra peccati intuitum esse reprobatum, credet nihil sibi posse prodesse, quomodocunque studeat peccatum vitare.

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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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