Two Dissertations · §700 · John Davenant

Cap. X controversy-sum: if in the eternal decree some were preconceived as worthier/holier and thence predestined, Arminius wins; if considered as sinners worthy of ruin and given faith by special mercy after election, we win

The sum of this controversy comes to this. If in the eternal decree of election and reprobation God preconceived certain persons as worthier, better, and holier than others, and thence infallibly predestined them to life — and preconceived others as unworthier, worse, and more wicked, and thence shut them out from predestination to life — Arminius wins, we lose the cause. But if, on the contrary side, all who were predestined to life before the world's foundations were laid were considered by God as sinners worthy of everlasting ruin, to be infallibly gifted — by God's special mercy and a singular calling according to purpose — with faith, repentance, perseverance, and salvation itself, and were not foreseen before their election as determining themselves ahead of others by a right use of free choice from offered grace to conceive faith and persevere in it.

Latin

Huc redit summa hujus controversiae: Si in aeterno decreto electionis et reprobationis personae quaedam fuerunt a Deo praeconsideratae tanquam aliis digniores, meliores et sanctiores, atque inde ad vitam infallibiliter praedestinatae, atque e contra aliae quaedam praeconsideratae ut hisce indigniores, nequiores et improbiores, atque inde a praedestinatione ad vitam exclusae, vincit Arminius, nos causa cadimus: Si autem, ex adverso, quotquot ad vitam fuerunt ante jacta mundi fundamenta praedestinati, fuerunt a Deo considerati ut peccatores aeterno exitio digni, per specialem misericordiam Dei, et singularem quandam et secundum propositum vocationem, fide, resipiscentia, perseverantia, ipsaque salute infallibiliter donandi, non autem praevisi ante electionem suam tanquam prae aliis recto liberi arbitrii usu ex oblata gratia ad concipiendam fidem in eaque perseverandum sese determinantes.

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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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