On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §127 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 10: Twin remedies — imputed justice and Spirit; Garissoles’s denial

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Corruption therefore wears a double face: forensic — so that unless it is forgiven it is charged to death — and moral or philosophical, making the subject ready to sin. We therefore needed a double cure: Christ’s justice imputed to heal corruption’s guilt, and the Spirit’s power to tear the blot out of the subject. Is this not orthodox teaching, confessed by all the purer churches? I am astonished that D. Garissoles denied it here — though the astonishment should not run deep. Those who press antecedent imputation almost cannot help striking this reef.

Latin

Cum igitur corruptio duplicem illum respectum habeat, unum forensem, quo fit, ut, nisi condonetur, imputetur ad mortem; alterum moralem seu philosophicum, quo subjectum reddit habile ad peccandum, duplici nobis remedio opus fuit, imputatione justitiae Christi, quae mederetur reatui corruptionis, & vi Spiritus, qua e subjecto revelleretur. Nonne orthodoxa est haec doctrina, & ab omnibus purioribus Ecclesiis confessa? Miror igitur eam doctrinam a D. Garissolio hoc loco fuisse negatam. Quanquam id non est admodum mirandum. Vix enim fieri potest, quin in hunc scopulum incurrant ij, qui antecedentem imputationem probare student.

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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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