On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §162 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 2: Four senses of Adam's first sin

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1. For the act by which he broke God's law—the first actual sin. 2. For that same act not taken by itself, but together with the habitual corruption it produced: the two stand as heating to heat, act to habit, actual change to habitual change. So both together sometimes share the one name 'Adam's sin' or 'the first sin.' 3. For the corruption that actual disobedience bred in Adam—his first habitual sin. 4. For that same corruption as transmitted and propagated into us, which is our sin because it inheres in us, affects us, and names us; yet it is called Adam's as of the author, the first as it were possessor, the fountain from which it flowed to us. If Adam's first sin is taken in this last sense, I say it is imputed to all Adam's posterity (Christ alone excepted, in whom it had no place) until they are justified from it through Christ; and I judge rightly condemned by the Synod of Charenton the opinion of those who profess to acknowledge this sin yet deny that it is imputed to anyone, however unbelieving—for that some in this age teach so in print, the learned Walaeus testified and mourned shortly before his death in a letter. Likewise if it is taken in the third sense, I grant that it is imputed to us—not as it clung in Adam, but as it passes into us, and, in Calvin's words, because it is within us: for our hereditary corruption is the same in kind as that which once was in Adam; and Adam shared with us his nature and his moral corruption alike.

Latin

1. pro actione qua dei legem est transgressus, quae primum fuit peccatum actuale. 2. pro eadem illa actione non praecise accepta, sed simul cum habituali corruptione quam peperit: habent enim se haec duo velut calefactio et calor, actus et habitus, mutatio actualis et mutatio habitualis. Itaque utrumque conjunctim idem nomen peccati Adami, vel primi peccati nonnunquam complectitur. 3. pro corruptione, quam actualis inobedientia genuit in Adamo, quaeque fuit ejus primum peccatum habituale. 4. denique pro eadem illa corruptione in nos transmissa et propagata, quae nostrum quidem peccatum est, quia nobis inhaeret, nos afficit, et denominat; dicitur tamen peccatum Adami ut authoris, ut primi veluti possessoris, ut fontis unde ad nos defluxit. Si hoc ultimo modo sumatur primum Adami peccatum, aio illud omnibus Adami posteris (uno, in quo locum nullum habuit, Christo excepto) imputari, donec ab eo per Christum justificentur, eorumque sententiam jure damnatam a Synodo Carentonensi arbitror, qui hoc quidem peccatum agnoscere se profitentur, nulli tamen imputari, quantumvis infideli: esse enim hoc saeculo qui id doceant editis libris testatur et deplorat paulo ante obitum suum in quadam Epistola doctissimus Walaeus. Similiter si tertio modo sumatur, fateor nobis imputari, non tamen qua haesit in Adamo, sed qua in nos transit, ac, ut verbis utar Calvini, quia intra nos est: est enim nostra corruptio haereditaria eadem specie cum illa, quae olim fuit in Adamo; ac quam suam naturam, tam suam corruptionem moralem nobiscum Adamus communicavit.

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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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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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