On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §119 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 10: What it means to have sinned in and with Adam

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Unless we grant, he says, that we truly sinned in Adam and with Adam, there is no way to explain how newborn infants bear any true guilt, and this Catholic dogma will look not merely above reason but against it. Before we go further: what does it mean to sin in and with Adam? The phrase has to be figurative. Perhaps it means Adam's sin is imputed to us. Take that reading, and I deny the proposition.

Latin

Nisi ponamus, inquit, nos in Adamo, & cum Adamo vere peccasse, nulla ratione explicari poterit, quomodo in parvulis recens natis sit aliqua vera culpa, & hoc Catholicum dogma, non tam supra rationem, quam contra rationem esse videbitur. Antequam progrediamur, quid est in & cum Adamo peccare? Figuratam enim profecto locutionem esse oportet. Fortasse est nobis Adami peccatum imputari. Hoc posito, propositionem illam nego.

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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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