Two Dissertations · §710 · John Davenant

Cap. X Arg. III: if reprobation hung on foreseen final impenitence/unbelief, no one would be reprobated except considered as dying — even as dead — because final perseverance/pertinacity is not fulfilled while we still live

Suppose the reprobation decree hung on the reprobates' foreseen final impenitence and unbelief. Then no one would be reprobated except as God considered him dying — nay, dead. Why is that plain? Because while life is lived here, neither anyone's final perseverance in faith, nor final pertinacity in unbelief, is fulfilled. Whatever comes before the end is only a step by which one climbs toward the summit, not the term by which the height's top is already held.

Latin

Si decretum reprobationis penderet ex praevisa finali impoenitentia et infidelitate reprobatorum, tum nemo reprobaretur nisi consideratus a Deo ut moribundus, imo ut mortuus. Ratio perspicua est; Quia dum hic vivitur, neque finalis cujusquam perseverantia in fide, neque finalis pertinacia in infidelitate adimpletur. Quicquid enim ante finem fuerit, gradus est quo ad fastigium ascenditur, non terminus quo jam culminis summa teneatur.

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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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