Two Dissertations · §783 · John Davenant

Cap. X Ultimum Propos. 1.II: Augustine, Jerome’s Critobolus, Julian — help only to be able; Semipelagians likewise withhold the gift of willing itself

So Augustine puts his view (De gratia Christi 5): We should know he thinks divine aid helps neither our will nor our act, but only the possibility of willing and working. A little later: He does not help so that we will, nor so that we act—only so that we are able to will and act. Jerome’s Critobolus, speaking as a Pelagian (Dialogi adversus Pelagianos 3), says: I do not remove God’s help, for by his grace we can all we can; but we keep each in its bounds—God’s grace that he gave free will power, and our will to do or not do. That is Julian’s point: the human will takes from itself the existence of a good work. The Semipelagians hit the same rock: granting preventing grace, they still invent a grace that does not give Willing, Believing, Persevering themselves, but always leaves the event to free will stirred and helped by God’s grace.

Latin

Sic ejus sententiam expressit Augustinus, De grat. Christi, cap. 5. Scire debemus, quod nec voluntatem nostram nec actionem Divino adjuvari credit auxilio, sed solum possibilitatem voluntatis atque operis. Et paulo post, Non adjuvat ut velimus, non adjuvat ut agamus, sed tantummodo adjuvat ut velle et agere valeamus. Sic Critobolus ille qui apud Hieronymum sustinet personam Pelagiani, Dialog. advers. Pelag. lib. 3. Non tollo, inquit, Dei auxilium, quippe per cujus gratiam possumus omne quod possumus, sed utrumque suis finibus terminamus, ut et Dei sit gratia quod dedit libero arbitrio potestatem, et nostrae voluntatis facere quid vel non facere. Et hoc est quod Julianus dixit, Voluntatem humanam operis boni existentiam a se accipere. In hunc eundem scopulum impegerunt et Semipelagiani: Nam gratiam Dei praevenientem concedentes, talem tamen fingunt quae non det ipsum Velle, ipsum Credere, ipsum Perseverare; sed quae eventum semper committat libero arbitrio per gratiam Dei excitato et adjuto.

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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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