Two Dissertations · §76 · John Davenant

Cap. 6 Thesis IV: Nature-as-grace adversaries and the thesis that God may give or deny application-media

Some people argue at once from the claim that Christ’s death, in the sense already given, was spent for the human race—for every human being—that divine justice and goodness now require God to administer to all for whom he thus gave Christ to death the means needed to generate faith. Yet it is clearer than noon that ethnics and pagans, on whom the light of the gospel never shone, have not been given means that immediately suffice to produce faith in them. So the same people take refuge here: they say even such people are always given sufficient means by which, mediately and as if by degrees, they could have been led to faith in Christ if they had used those means well.

Ask what those means of grace are that could have stood ready for all and led all sufficiently to faith in Christ, and they thrust Nature upon us wrapped in the name of Grace. They say remnants of spiritual life remain in every human—some knowledge of God in the mind, some desire for the good they know in the heart; if a person uses those natural gifts rightly, God will heap greater grace on him and gift him with saving faith. Aquinas seems to lean that way in De veritate, question 14, article 11, reply to the first objection, where he writes: if someone reared in the woods followed the lead of natural reason in appetite for good and flight from evil, it must be held with full certainty that God would either reveal by inward inspiration what is necessary for belief, or send some preacher of the faith to him.

So their view comes to this: by the efficacy and merit of Christ’s death God is already bound as by statute to supply everyone with sufficient means to be led to Christ if they will, so that nothing is wanting on God’s side to keep anyone from faith and a fruitful share in Christ’s death. To untie that knot we have taken up this thesis to explain and confirm it.

Thesis IV. Once Christ’s death is posited as applicable to all humans under the condition of faith, it stands with divine goodness and justice to supply or deny the means of application—to nations or to particular persons—according to the good pleasure of his will, not according to the disparity of human wills.

Latin

Sunt enim nonnulli, qui ex eo quod mors Christi, sensu praedicto, humano generi, sive omnibus & singulis hominibus, impensa affirmatur, statim inferunt, Divinae justitiae & bonitati illud jam incumbere, ut omnibus, pro quibus Christum sic in mortem dedit, administret media ad fidem ingenerandam necessaria. Quia autem luce meridiana clarius liquet, Ethnicis & Paganis, quibus nunquam affulsit lux Evangelii, non esse data media quae immediate sufficiant ad fidem in iis producendam, eo confugiunt, ut dicant etiam talibus dari semper media sufficientia, quibus mediate, & quasi per gradus ad fidem Christi duci potuissent, si istis bene usi fuissent. Si quis autem quaerat, quae sint illa gratiae media, quae omnibus praestare, omnesque ad fidem Christi sufficienter ducere potuissent, Naturam Gratiae nomine obvolutam nobis obtrudunt. Dicunt enim reliquias quasdam vitae spiritualis omnibus hominibus inesse, scilicet in intellectu aliquam Dei cognitionem, in affectu ad bonum cognitum aliquod desiderium, quibus donis naturalibus si homo recte utatur, Deum illum majori gratia cumulaturum, & fide salutifera donaturum. Videtur Aquinas in hanc sententiam propendere, Quaest. 14. De veritate, art. 11, Resp. ad 1, Ubi scribit hunc in modum, Si quis in sylvis enutritus ductum rationis naturalis sequeretur in appetitu boni, & fuga mali; certissime tenendum est quod ei Deus vel per internam inspirationem revelaret ea quae ad credendum sunt necessaria, vel aliquem fidei praedicatorem ad eum dirigeret. Eo igitur redit horum sententia, ut existiment Deum efficacia & merito mortis Christi, jam quasi statuta lege adstrictum esse, ut media sufficientia omnibus suppeditet quibus ad Christum ducantur si voluerint; ita ut ex parte Dei nihil desideretur, quo minus omnes ad fidem & fructuosam participationem mortis Christi perveniant. Ad hujus difficultatis enodationem hanc thesin explicandam & confirmandam suscepimus. Thesis IV. Posita Christi morte omnibus hominibus applicabili sub conditione fidei, stat cum bonitate & justitia Divina suppeditare vel negare, sive nationibus sive singularibus hominibus, media applicationis, idque pro beneplacito voluntatis suae, non pro disparitate voluntatum humanarum.

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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)

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