On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §129 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 10: Retorsion — if prior reatus is only by will, why Christ’s suffering?

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I can turn the argument on its maker. If no evil means no need of a remedy, and there is no evil unless we carry a guilt earlier than our original stain from Adam’s disobedience, and the sole true cause of that guilt in us is God’s will — then I cannot see why imputed justice is necessary at all. Let God simply withhold imputation of the first Adam’s sin, as He already withholds imputation of other sins — Adam’s own, or our forefathers’ — and there will be no evil and no need of a remedy. On Garissoles’s account there is no reason God should charge us with that sin rather than with Adam’s other sins or other parents’ sins, except His bare will. If imputing or not imputing hangs on that will alone, why did Christ have to suffer such horrors so that this sin might not be charged to us?

Latin

Possem etiam hanc rationem in suum autorem retorquere. Nam si ubi nullum est malum, nullo opus est remedio, & nullum sit malum, si nullus sit in nobis propter Adae inobedientiam reatus labe nostra originali prior, & cur sit in nobis iste reatus vera & unica causa est Dei voluntas, non intelligo quae sit imputatae justitiae necessitas. Abstineat modo Deus ab imputatione primi Adae peccati quemadmodum sibi temperat ab aliorum peccatorum, vel ipsius Adami, vel nostrorum majorum, imputatione, nullum erit malum, nec opus erit remedio. Nulla enim est causa, si D. Garissolio fides habetur, cur Deus illud peccatum nobis potius quam alia peccata, vel Adami, vel aliorum parentum, imputet, praeter unam eius voluntatem. Cum ergo id pendeat ab eius voluntate ut imputet, vel non imputet, quid opus fuit, Christum tam dira pati, ut posset nobis illud peccatum non imputari?

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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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