On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §125 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 10: Superest ultima — Garissoles from imputed Christ’s justice

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His last argument remains, drawn from the imputation of Christ’s justice. He puts it this way: anything that overturns or shakes the teaching of Christ’s imputed righteousness must not be allowed or endured, but must be rooted out and cast off entirely. Yet the dogma that Adam’s sin is not imputed, he says, certainly shakes that teaching more than a little — because denying the first makes denying the second an easy slide. Since in Christ, the second Adam, we have a sure remedy against the evils and losses the first Adam brought on the human race, and a remedy ought to match the diseases it is meant to heal, anyone who thinks we inherit from Adam nothing worse than native corruption — and who sets sanctification over against that corruption — will soon conclude that we have no guilt earlier than our original stain from Adam’s disobedience, and that we need no imputation of Christ’s justice ahead of sanctification in nature’s order: where there is no evil, no remedy is needed.

Latin

Superest ultima eius ratio ducta ab imputatione Iustitiae Christi. Eam sic concipit. Quod doctrinam de imputata Christi justitia vel convellit, vel labefactat, neque admittendum, neque tolerandum est, sed amolendum omnino ac rejiciendum. Atqui dogmate de Non-imputatione peccati Adae, doctrinam de imputatione justitiae Christi, non parum labefactari certum est, cum ex negatione prioris facillimus sit lapsus ad posterioris negationem. Nam cum in Christo tanquam secundo Adamo, remedium habeamus certissimum adversus ea mala & damna, quae sunt in genus humanum a primo Adamo invecta; Remedium autem morbis, quibus sanandis paratum est, justa proportione respondere debeat; qui praeter nativam corruptionem, nihil nos damni ex Adamo trahere existimabit, & huic corruptioni considerabit ex adverso respondere donum sanctificationis, facile in eam sententiam deveniet, cum nullus sit in nobis propter Adae inobedientiam reatus labe nostra originali prior, neque opus esse ulla justitia Christi imputatione, quae sanctificationem ordine naturae praecedat: quia ubi nullum est malum, nullo etiam opus est remedio.

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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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