Two Dissertations · §696 · John Davenant

Cap. X: to avoid calumny — our Church rejects both those who make God cause of unbelief/damnation by absolute antecedent will, and Arminian/Pelagian errors that make each man after common sufficient grace the smith of his own eternal fortune

And here, to avoid malevolent calumnies, we must keep repeating: our Church rejects no less those portentous opinions that so paint the reprobation decree as to make God the cause of human unbelief and impenitence, and even refer men's very perdition and damnation to God's absolute antecedent will — than the Arminian errors drawn from Pelagius's dregs, which so set the decrees of predestination and reprobation that after the decree to administer common sufficient grace, each man is made smith of his own fortune in free and everlasting goods. God waits and watches what men will do, and as he foresaw them about to believe or not, elects them or does not elect — that is, reprobates.

Latin

Atque hic, ut vitemus malevolorum calumnias, subinde cogimur repetere, Ecclesiam nostram non minus rejicere portentosas illorum opiniones, qui sic reprobationis decretum nobis depingunt, ut Deum infidelitatis et impoenitentiae humanae causam statuant, ipsamque adeo perditionem et damnationem hominum in Dei absolutam et antecedentem voluntatem revocent, quam Arminianorum ex Pelagii faecibus haustos errores, qui sic praedestinationis et reprobationis decreta nobis proponunt, ut interim unumquemque, post decretum de administranda communiter gratia sufficiente, constituant in gratuitis et aeternis bonis fabrum fortunae suae; Deo scilicet praestolante et intuente quid homines sint facturi, et prout praeviderit eos credituros, aut non credituros, eligente eos vel non eligente, hoc est, reprobante.

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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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