Two Dissertations · §717 · John Davenant

Cap. X Arg. IV: whoever has power over the necessary antecedent has power over the consequent — if believing/not believing from free will excited by sufficient grace is the antecedent to election/reprobation, each can choose either

That is proved thus: whoever has power over the necessary antecedent also has power over the consequent that depends infallibly on it. So if believing and embracing offered grace is the necessary antecedent to election, and not believing — or finally refusing offered grace — is the antecedent to reprobation, and both hang on a free act of the human will excited by sufficient grace, what is plainer than that it lies in each one's power to be reprobated or not? Between those as contradictories no middle can be assigned.

Latin

Id inde evincitur, quia in cujus potestate est antecedens necessarium, in ejusdem etiam est consequens, quod ex eodem antecedente infallibiliter dependet: Si igitur credere, et gratiam oblatam amplecti sit antecedens necessarium ad electionem, et non credere, seu gratiam oblatam finaliter respuere sit antecedens ad reprobationem, et utrumque horum ex libero actu humanae voluntatis sufficienti gratia excitatae dependeat, quid apertius quam esse in potestate singulorum ut reprobentur vel non reprobentur, cum inter haec tanquam contradictoria medium assignari nullo modo possit?

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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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