Two Dissertations · §765 · John Davenant

Cap. X Arg. X: suspending gifts on prior littleness is Pelagian unless littleness itself is God’s special gift — Orange canon 6; preparing littleness for one is electing

Next: those who hang these gifts on prior littleness, unless they admit that littleness itself is God’s special gift, fall into Pelagianism and hit Orange canon 6. If they do admit it, that is the same as granting God prepared and gave that littleness—on which faith and salvation hang—to one and not the other, and prepared and gave faith and salvation themselves; which is nothing other than electing one and reprobating the other.

Latin

Dein, qui haec dona Dei suspendunt ex parvitate praeeunte, nisi fateantur hanc ipsam parvitatem esse speciale donum Dei, in Pelagianismum incidunt, et incurrunt in Canonem 6. Concilii Arausicani: Si autem fateantur, perinde est concedere Deum praeparasse et donasse hanc parvitatem, unde fides et salus dependet, uni et non alteri, atque praeparasse et donasse ipsam fidem et salutem; quod nihil aliud est, quam unum elegisse, alterum reprobasse.

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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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