Two Dissertations · §686 · John Davenant

Cap. IX Arg. 14 Sol cont.: we confess execution-order — Christ first proposed, then apprehended by faith, then justification, sanctification, glorification; mapping a distinct decree-series in God's mind overtrusts wit

So we confess that from eternity God established this for all who are to be saved: Christ first proposed, then apprehended by faith, then their justification, then sanctification, and at last glorification. But if anyone, not content with that order of execution, also wants to map for us a distinct series of divine decrees in the order of conception in God's mind and will, and with Arminius urges that divine justice is attacked unless one decree is set prior to the other — he seems to me to trust his own wit too much.

Latin

Fatemur igitur Deum ab aeterno constituisse ut omnibus salvandis Christus primo in loco proponeretur, dein per fidem apprehenderetur, hinc ut eorundem justificatio sequeretur, tum sanctificatio, et demum glorificatio: Sed si quis minime contentus hoc ordine exsecutionis, velit etiam nobis describere seriem decretorum Divinorum, ordine conceptionis in mente ac voluntate Dei quasi distinctam, atque urgeat cum Arminio, Divinam justitiam impugnari, nisi hoc consideretur ut illo prius, is mihi videtur nimium ingenio suo fidere.

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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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