Two Dissertations · §677 · John Davenant

Cap. IX Arg. 14 (Corvinus): both inconveniences charged because we teach precise will to save before satisfaction in Christ / faith-foresight, and will to damn apart from impenitence

They contend that both inconveniences follow from our view. Why? Because we teach that God so loved certain sinners that he precisely willed to save them before he satisfied his love of justice in Christ, or before he looked on them as believing in Christ. And on the other side, we teach that God wills to damn certain sinners apart from considering impenitence — even though he has satisfied his justice in Christ.

Latin

Utrumque hoc incommodum ex nostra sententia sequi contendunt, quia docemus, Deum quosdam peccatores ita amasse, ut praecise eos voluerit servare, antequam amori suo erga justitiam satisfecerit in Christo, aut eos ut in Christum credentes sit intuitus; atque e contra, Deum quosdam peccatores velle damnare citra considerationem impoenitentiae, licet justitiae suae in Christo Deus satisfecerit.

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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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