Two Dissertations · §680 · John Davenant

Cap. IX Arg. 14 Sol: difference from Arminius — not that elect can be saved while remaining unbelieving, but that faith/obedience is not antecedent election-motive from free will determining itself

I answer: Our view does not differ from the Arminian in this — that he holds the elect cannot be saved without faith and obedience rendered, while we think they can be saved even if they stay unbelieving and rebellious to God. The difference is this: he makes that condition of faith and obedience an antecedent motive of election, and hangs the act of believing on free choice excited by God's grace and as it were brought to a certain balance, yet determining itself before election and thereby procuring divine election.

Latin

Respondeo: Non in eo situm est discrimen sententiae nostrae ab Arminiana, quod ille electos non posse salvari statuat absque praestita fidei et obedientiae conditione, nos autem opinemur eos servari posse etiamsi maneant infideles et Deo rebelles: sed quod ille hanc fidei et obedientiae conditionem facit antecedaneum electionis motivum, et hunc actum credendi suspendit a libero arbitrio per gratiam Dei excitato et quasi ad aequilibrium quoddam reducto, sed seipsum ante electionem determinante, et inde electionem Divinam procurante.

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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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