Davenant:

1) Before we come to answer particular objections, we must put this author¹ in remembrance of these few things which he has not well considered.

1. First, where as he troubles himself with distinguishing the supralapsarian and the sublapsarian doctrine, calling them supralapsarians, who in ordering the eternal decrees of God concerning election and preterition or reprobation place them before the consideration of the fall, and of those sublapsarians, who place them after; this pains might well have been spared. For priorities and posteriorities in the eternal immanent decrees of God are but imaginations of man’s weak reason, and framed diversely (nay contrarily) as well by Schoolmen and Papists, as by Protestants, or those which are termed Calvinists; and finally they have little or no use in this controversy. Aquinas thought it no such matter of moment, whether predestination be considered before man’s fall and state of misery or after: Motus non accepit speciem a termino a quo, sed a termino ad quem. Nihil enim refert quantum ad rationen dealbationis, utrum ille qui dealbatur fuerit niger, aut pallidus, aut rubeus: & simileter nihil refert ad rationem prædestinationis, utrum aliquis prædistinetur in vitiam æternam a statumiseriæ vel non.² And for Reprobation, he seems rather to incline to their opinion, who place it in order of consideration before the fall in making it such a part of the divine providence as permits some men, deficere a fine.³ So that this distinction of supralapsarians and sublapsarians, as served this author to no other purpose but to the inculcating of the same objections again and again. John Davenant, Animadversions Written by the Right Reverend Father in God, John Lord Bishop of Sarisbury, upon the Treatise intitled, Gods love to Mankinde (London: Printed for Iohn Partridge, 1641), 160-161. [Some spelling modernized; some reformatting; italics original; side references to Scripture cited inline; references to external works cited as footnote; [bracketed footnote content mine; and underlining mine.]

2) For the positive act, which this author describes to be a pre-ordination unto hell-torments; those who comprise them both under this one word reprobation, do notwithstanding make this act or decree respective unto sin, as we have already shown. As for those of our Church in this controversy, whether predestination and non-predestination be grounded upon the prime absolute will of God, or upon his prescience of good and bad acts to be performed by men, they do and must understand by the word reprobation, not the decree of damnation of any particular persons, but only the absolute decree of non-preparing for them that effectual grace, qua certissum liberarentur, and of leaving them to such means of grace under which by their own default infallibiliter ruunt ad interitum voluntarium. Thus our English divines in their suffrage have described it, and thus the reverent and judicious Bishop of Norwich conceived it, when he made both Remonstrants and Puritans (as the term calls them) to err out of the true middle way which the Church of England holds in opposition to them both. In election, he makes this the error of the Remonstrants, “That they ground the absolute decree of men’s particular election upon the prescience of their faith and perseverance (as this author does) whereas that reverent Prelate holds with the Church of England, and Saint Augustine, Electio non invenit fideles, sed facit. As for the errors of the Puritans about Predestination or election, he reduces them to these heads, the excluding of the conditional decree or evangelical promise, the disordering of the decree of predestination by bringing it in before the fall, and the decree of Christ’s incarnation. As for the preparation and donation of such special grace per quam non solium possint credere aut obediant, he makes it the proper fruit of election: whereas he grants unto the non-elect only salutem gratiamque communem & sufficientem in mediis Divinutus ordinatis, si verbo Dei spirituque sancto deese noluerint. Unto which add that wherein all divines of all sides agree, “That God administers this common grace with an eternal and infallibly prescience that it will be rejected or abused by the non-elect, and with an absolute decree of permitting it so to be; and then it is clear, the English divines with the Church of England nec divertisse ad dextram in illorum sententiam qui ex præscita fida & perseverantia per liberam cooperationem arbitrii humani gratiæ prævenientis deducunt, nec ad finistram declinasse & gratiam sufficientem tollunt, &c. They are the words of that reverent Prelate Doctor Overall. John Davenant, Animadversions Written by the Right Reverend Father in God, John Lord Bishop of Sarisbury, upon the Treatise intitled, Gods love to Mankinde (London: Printed for Iohn Partridge, 1641), 199-201. [Some spelling modernized; some reformatting; italics original; side references to Scripture cited inline; references to external works cited as footnote; [bracketed footnote content mine; and underlining mine.]

Read the rest of this entry »