Two Dissertations · §716 · John Davenant

Cap. X Arg. IV: if God passed over none except from foresight of sufficient grace finally despised, it would lie in each one's power to be reprobated or not — elect/reprobate difference would first arise from human wills, not diverse divine placita

Suppose God passed over or reprobated no one except from foresight of his sufficient grace finally despised and contemned — or, what comes to the same thing, from foresight of final impenitence and unbelief. Then it would lie in each person's power, at his own choice, whether he be reprobated or not, elect or those not chosen. Nay more: the whole difference between elect and reprobate om different decisions of the divine will, but from diverse acts of human wills.

Latin

Si Deus neminem praeteriret aut reprobaret nisi ex praevisione gratiae suae sufficientis finaliter spretæ et contemptae, sive (quod eodem redit) ex praevisione finalis impoenitentiae et infidelitatis, tum situm esset in potestate uniuscujusque, ut pro arbitrio suo reprobetur vel non reprobetur, atque electus vel non-electus esset. Imo omne discrimen electorum et reprobatorum non ex diversis placitis Divinae voluntatis, sed ex diversis actibus humanarum voluntatum primo exoriretur.

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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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