Two Dissertations · §679 · John Davenant

Cap. IX Arg. 14 Sol: two alleged inconveniences of precise election without obedience-gaze — loves predestined more than justice; kills necessity of faith, obedience, and religious care

They press that we set God as having precisely elected some to salvation without any regard for obedience. That opinion, they think, is pressed by two inconveniences. akes God love those so predestined more than his own justice, because he wills to save them before he has satisfied his love of justice in Christ, or foresaw them as believing in Christ. The other: it takes away all need of faith and obedience, and all care for religion, because we say those so predestined are loved by God unto salvation before and apart from foresight of faith and obedience in them.

Latin

Instant, nos statuere Deum sine ullius obedientiae intuitu aliquos praecise ad salutem elegisse: Quam opinionem duobus incommodis urgeri arbitrantur. Unum est, quod ponat Deum taliter praedestinatos magis amare quam justitiam suam, quia vult eos servare, antequam amori suo erga justitiam satisfecerit in Christo, aut eos ut in Christo credentes praeviderit. Alterum est, quod tollat omnem necessitatem fidei et obedientiae, omnemque religionis solicitudinem, quia dicimus taliter praedestinatos amari a Deo ad salutem ante et citra praevisionem fidei et obedientiae in iisdem.

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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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