Two Dissertations · §90 · John Davenant

Cap. 6 Arg. 4 close: Application-grace given or denied by free good pleasure, not human operations

Let them explain how God is not said to wait for the human will, and to hang the help of supernatural grace on obedience to the natural law written in human hearts, if—Christ's death once granted—God on this way of acting gives grace to all who use natural gifts rightly, and withholds it from those who do not. Since all of that is utterly foreign to the truth, it remains to say that God, the merit of Christ's death notwithstanding, can give or deny the grace of applying that merit, and ordinarily does so to particular persons by the good pleasure and freedom of his will—not by merits, or by the different operations of human wills.

Latin

Exponant nobis quomodo Deus non dicatur expectare voluntatem humanam, & obedientiae naturalis legis in cordibus hominum scriptae subjungere gratiae supernaturalis adjutorium, si posita Christi morte secundum hunc agendi modum Deus gratiam indat omnibus, si donis naturalibus recte utantur, non indat, si non utantur. Cum ergo haec omnia sint a veritate alienissima, restat ut dicamus Deum, non obstante merito mortis Christi, gratiam applicandi hoc meritum dare, vel negare posse, & solere singularibus hominibus, pro beneplacito & libertate voluntatis suae, non pro meritis aut operationibus diversis 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)

The 1683 reprint was not used as base text. No modern English was copied.

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