On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §114 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 10: Martyr answers — limit, permission, Spirit, regenerating grace

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Ask, then, why parents stained by many kinds of sin do not always pass those stains to their children. I answer with Peter Martyr: God fixed a bound so that evil would not rage without measure, and He held this spread of evil in suspension. Why does disobedient Adam still beget sons rebellious toward God and stubborn by nature? Because God willed to permit the fall — which is to say, not to stop Adam's fall or its onward spread. Why does idolatrous Ahaz fail to beget a Hezekiah in his own likeness? Because the God who had chosen Hezekiah loosed him from his father's idolatry by the Holy Spirit's power. And why do adulterers, drunkards, and robbers not always raise children rushing into the same vices? Either providence, watching over the human race's conservation, blocks those vices from spreading, or regenerating grace later strips away what did spread.

Latin

Quaerenti ergo, unde fit, ut parentes, qui peccatis variis sese commaculant, inquinamenta illa peccatorum suorum non semper transmittant in liberos? Respondeo verbis Petri Martyris, quia Deus modum praefixit, ne malum grassetur in immensum, & hanc mali propagationem suspendit. Cur Adamus inobediens filios generat rebelles Deo, & natura contumaces? Respondeo, quia Deus voluit permittere, hoc est, non impedire lapsum Adami & lapsus propagationem. Cur Achas idololatra non generat Ezechiam sibi similem? Quia Deus, qui Ezechiam elegerat, eum a paterna idololatria Spiritus sancti virtute liberavit. Cur adulteri, ebriosi, praedones, non semper gignunt filios in eadem vitia praecipites? Quia vitia illa, vel non propagantur impediente Dei providentia, quae humani generis conservationi prospicit, vel propagata tolluntur regenerationis gratia.

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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.

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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.

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