On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §113 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 10: Placeus — same will explains the discrimination without antecedent imputation

Click or tap any sentence to jump there. The side buttons skip a paragraph.

What first strikes me is the learned man's sheer absurdity: he never sees that we, no less than he, may fetch the reason of this discrimination from God's will. The easier reply is ready. Every vice carries a contagion able to spread like plague, poison, or leaven — unless providence or grace from God throws a barrier across its path. On that footing the discrimination is plain. God refused to block the first parent's vice from running on through carnal generation; yet He chose to check other parents' other vices so that natural propagation would not multiply them likewise. Thus in Adam what belongs to sin and nature stands out, and in the rest what belongs to God's providence and grace.

Latin

Primum satis mirari nequeo viri docti ἀτοπίαν, non animadvertentis, nos pariter a Dei voluntate hujus discriminis rationem petere posse. Quid enim facilius quam respondere, ejusmodi esse omnis vitii contagium, ut instar pestis, vel veneni, vel fermenti sese diffundere & propagare possit, nisi Dei vel providentia vel gratia obicem ponat. Discrimen igitur inde procedere, quod primi parentis vitium Deus, quominus per carnalem generationem propagaretur, noluit impedire: Aliorum vero parentum alia vitia, ne similiter propagatione naturali multiplicarentur, inhibere voluit; ut in illo quae peccati & naturae; in his quae Dei providentiae & gratiae vis esset, perspici posset.

Report a mistake in this passage

About this text

Josué de la Place (Placeus) on the imputation of Adam's first sin: chapters 1 to 12 and 14, and the later disputation up to its chapter on Romans 5:14, from the Latin. The rest is not yet translated.

Josué de la Place (c. 1596–1655), known in Latin as Placeus, was pastor at Nantes and from 1633 professor of theology at the Academy of Saumur, the school of Cameron and Amyraut.

On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin argues the distinctive Saumur thesis: Adam's sin reaches his posterity only mediately, through the inherited corruption — never by immediate reckoning of a sin they did not commit. Fellow Reformed theologians rejected the view, but the book remains its classic statement.

Part only: Chapters 1–12 and 14, and the disputation up to Romans 5:14

Datec. 1645–1655 AD (written after the 1645 Synod of Charenton, and read in draft by Drelincourt by 10 December 1653; printed posthumously at Saumur, 1661; Reformed / Amyraldian circle)

The English is made from the 1661 Saumur Latin of chapters 1 to 12 and 14 and part of the later disputation. No earlier English was copied.

Printed text used

Translated from Latin (Saumur 1661) (Latin)
Also checked Text extract of Caput Primum (Latin)
Also checked machine-read text of the 1661 volume (Latin)

We have not yet re-checked this work against its source. We made this study translation with AI help. No scholar has yet certified it as faithful and complete. Open Latin on any section, or the Latin source link, to see the source text. It is not a critical edition.

Report a mistake