Two Dissertations · §688 · John Davenant

Cap. IX Arg. 14 Sol cont.: second knot — Biel: do not posit priorities (or plural ordered acts) among these divine decrees; ranking incarnation before/after election is false speculation

Second, this knot can be cut with Biel: those priorities are not to be set among these divine decrees — nor pluralities of ordered acts. So if anyone wants to consider an order of these decrees that sets Christ's incarnation before election, or the reverse, that consideration is false speculation (Biel, in 3. dist. 2. qu. Dub. 3).

Latin

Secundo nodus iste discindi potest, si quis cum Biele defendat, Prioritates illas in Divinis hisce decretis non esse ponendas, sicut nec pluralitates actuum ordinatorum; ac proinde si quis considerare velit talem ordinem horum decretorum ut ponat Christi incarnationem electione priorem, vel e contra, hanc considerationem esse falsam speculationem. Sic Biel, in 3. dist. 2. qu. dub. 3.

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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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