On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §123 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 10: Fourth ration — habitual voluntariness enough for habitual guilt

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

Fourth: guilt is said to need more than voluntariness by habitual will; it must also have come from a voluntary act — otherwise that habitual voluntariness would be natural and fit for mercy, not for blame. I say the opposite: that is enough for habitual guilt. Original vice is called voluntary not because it comes from the will, but because it is in the will: the first way makes the act voluntary, the second the habit. That vice is the will's own malice and crookedness, and though natural it is still called evil. The more naturally evil the will, the worse it is, and the more hateful.

Latin

Quarto, non satis est ad culpam, ut aliquid sit voluntarium habituali voluntate, sed requiritur, ut processerit ab actu etiam voluntario; alioqui voluntarium illud voluntate habituali naturale esset, & misericordia, non reprehensione dignum. Immo inquam, id satis est ad culpam habitualem. Non enim vitium originale dicitur voluntarium, quia est a voluntate, sed quia est in voluntate: illo modo voluntarius est actus, isto habitus: Nimirum vitium illud est ipsius voluntatis malitia & pravitas, a qua, licet naturalis sit, mala dicitur. Quo magis autem naturaliter mala est voluntas, eo est pejor, & odio dignior.

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