John Davenant and the English Appropriation of the Synod of Dort

Chapter 2 builds on the previous chapter’s emphasis on the breadth and pastoral orientation of the Reformed Conformist approach to grace, with an examination of the Collegiate Suffrage of the British delegates at the Synod of Dort (1618–19). It underlines that the Suffrage was drawn up to make room for Davenant and Ward’s distinctive reading of the death of Christ, a reading shared by influential clerics at home. The chapter then shows how the positions adopted in the Suffrage were echoed but also given a different inflection in the lectures that Davenant delivered in Cambridge when he returned from the Synod. Davenant’s lectures on predestination and the death of Christ show how he adapted the teaching of Dort to suit his own reading of the Church of England’s confessional position, whilst offering extensive advice on its pastoral application both in the pulpit and in the spiritual lives of the faithful.