Two Dissertations · §747 · John Davenant

Cap. X Arg. IX: reprobation not a punishment — shown in reprobate angels whom Suarez, Bellarmine, Vasquez say God passed by with no merited penalty in them

That reprobation or non-election is not itself a penalty—though the reprobate always fall into everlasting pains—is plain from the reprobate or those not chosen angels: in them there was nothing that deserved penalty or me and passed others by. Suarez, Bellarmine, and Vasquez confess it, and the theologians agree.

Latin

Reprobationem autem sive non-electionem non esse poenam; quamvis reprobati semper in poenas incidant sempiternas, patet exemplo Angelorum reprobatorum, sive non-electorum, in quibus nihil erat quod poenam sive supplicium mereretur, et tamen Deus quosdam ex illis elegit, alios non elegit sed praeteriit, fatente Suarez, Bellarmino, Vasquez, ac consentientibus omnibus Theologis.

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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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