Two Dissertations · §780 · John Davenant

Cap. X Ultimum Propos. 1.I: Pelagius grants supernatural grace only as law and external teaching — Aug. De grat. Christi 3; Prosper De Ingratis

I. Pelagius granted supernatural grace—but as doctrine, or external revelation of what is needed for salvation. Augustine makes it plain (De gratia Christi contra Pelagium 1.3): he puts God’s grace either in nature or in law and teaching, so that God is thought to help by revealing and showing what ought to be done. Prosper says the same (De Ingratis 20): With you grace is nothing but law, the warning prophet, and a minister’s teaching. And in the letter to Ruffinus on grace and free will he says they confess only that grace is somehow a mistress to free will. The Orthodox, not content with that external admonishing grace, pressed that internal grace must be acknowledged.

Latin

I. Concessit igitur Pelagius supernaturalem gratiam, sed in doctrina constitutam, sive revelatione externa earum rerum quae ad salutem consequendam sunt necessaria. Patet ex Augustino, lib. 1. De gratia Christi contra Pelag. cap. 3. Gratiam Dei aut in natura ponit, aut in lege atque doctrina: ut cum adjuvet Deus hominem, revelando et ostendendo quid fieri debeat, adjuvare credatur. Idem videre licet apud Prosperum, Carmine De Ingratis, cap. 20. Aliud non est vobiscum gratia quam lex, quamque propheta monens, et quam doctrina ministri. Et in Epistola ad Ruff. De grat. et lib. arbitr. Hoc tantum dicit eos de gratia confiteri, quod quaedam libero arbitrio sit magistra, etc. Sed Orthodoxi hac gratia externa et monitrice minime contenti, urgebant internam gratiam esse agnoscendam.

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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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