On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §116 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 10: Against Hosea — imputation follows; God not author of perdition

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There is more. If the true, solid, and only cause of that difference is God's will — pleased to charge Adam's first sin to us all, yet not pleased to charge Adam's later sins or the sins of other parents — then we must confess what conscience most fiercely flees: that the true, solid, and only cause of our being sinners and lost is God's will. That runs against the oracle, From you is your destruction, O Israel. I do admit that, where original vice propagates, an imputation hangs together with it unless mercy from God steps in; yet that imputation comes after the propagation, never before it, and never as its cause. But to plant an imputation that makes Adam's actual sin ours, that makes us sinners and debtors to eternal death, that is then treated as the cause of sin's spread, and whose only cause is said to be God's will — if that is not to cast God as the author of our perdition, what is?

Latin

Adde quod, si rei illius vera & solida, & unica causa est Dei voluntas, cui sic libuit nobis omnibus primum Adami peccatum imputare; nec libuit aut sequentia Adami, aut aliorum parentum peccata imputare, fatendum est (id quod vehementissime refugit conscientia) veram & solidam & unicam causam cur simus peccatores & perditi, Dei voluntatem esse, contra oraculum, Ex te perditio tua, o Israel. Fateor equidem cum propagatione vitii originalis imputationem, nisi Dei misericordia intercedat, cohaerere, sed ea imputatio sequitur propagationem, non antecedit, nec est ullo modo propagationis causa. At ponere imputationem, qua peccatum actuale Adami nostrum fiat, qua fiamus peccatores & rei mortis aeternae, quae sit causa propagationis peccati, & hujus imputationis unicam esse causam Dei voluntatem, quid est facere Deum perditionis nostrae autorem, si hoc non est?

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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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