Two Dissertations · §91 · John Davenant

Cap. 6 Arg. 5 open: Useful ends that confirm application-grace by good pleasure

Our view is confirmed by the most useful ends it serves to bring out—ends the contrary view plainly abolishes. Take this case: grant Christ's death, and still take God as distributing or withholding the grace by which that death is applied to human beings according to his good pleasure, and not according to some difference among human wills or actions.

Latin

Confirmatur sententia nostra a finibus utilissimis quibus illustrandis inservit, quique per contrariam sententiam plane abrogantur. Verbi causa: Si Deus, Christi morte posita, sumatur tamen distribuere gratiam qua applicetur, vel non distribuere hominibus secundum beneplacitum suum, & non secundum disparitatem aliquam voluntatum aut actionum 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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