Two Dissertations · §681 · John Davenant

Cap. IX Arg. 14 Sol: we judge faith/obedience necessary to eternal life by fixed decree — yet as special gift prepared in predestination, produced by special operation, foreseen as medium not motive

We take the other side. For adults we judge faith and obedience plainly necessary to everlasting life by God's fixed decree. Yet we deny that this faith and obedience was foreseen in this or that person as something springing from free choice stirred by common grace, and then dragging election's benefit after it. We hold instead that it was a special gift, prepared from eternity for each elect person in the predestination decree. It is to be produced from the human will by a special operation that depends on that decree. From eternity, then, it was foreseen in all the elect — not as the motive by which they win their election, but as the preceding medium by which they reach the kingdom of heaven to which they were elect.

Latin

Nos e contra, quamvis fidei et obedientiae conditionem (si de adultis loquamur) ad vitam aeternam consequendam, ex Dei fixo decreto plane necessariam judicemus, tamen agnoscimus hanc fidem et obedientiam non praevisam fuisse in hac aut illa singulari persona, tanquam ex libero ejus arbitrio per gratiam communem excitato enascentem, et electionis beneficium post se trahentem; sed tanquam speciale donum fuisse huic et illi singulari personae in decreto praedestinationis ab aeterno praeparatum, et ex humana voluntate speciali quadam operatione ab eodem decreto dependente producendam, et inde ab aeterno praevisam in omnibus electis, non tanquam motivum quo ipsi consequantur suam electionem, sed tanquam medium quo praecedente consequentur regnum caelorum ad quod fuerunt electi.

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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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