On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §168 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 2 §III: Garissoles — Pontificiorum ludification analogy (threefold justitia Christi)

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Garissoles. But let those who parade such care in explaining the Question say whether they will not count it a mockery and a piece of prestidigitation if one of those new Pontifical doctors—who wish to be thought to tour provinces and cities in the zeal of pacification—comes on blandly and, in a weighty cause (say the business of justification), professes agreement with the Evangelicals: that he willingly embraces justification by the imputed righteousness of Christ our Lord, provided he may explain the matter by a distinction. For Christ's righteousness, he would say, can be taken in several ways. (1) For those acts most exact to the rule of God's law, by which Christ living and dying rendered fullest obedience to his Father's commands. (2) For that habitual, inhering righteousness by which Christ's soul shone most splendidly. (3) For the inward, habitual righteousness that is subjectively in each of the faithful, yet may rightly be called Christ's, because it flows into us from Christ and Christ's Spirit as its author. In this last sense, then, he would acknowledge, in the justification controversy, the imputation of Christ's righteousness; but if we take Christ's righteousness in the first and second senses, he would acknowledge no such imputation and reject it as absurd. A consensus in this business so explained—no one fails to complain—is a mockery rather than a consensus. And so on.

Latin

GAR. Dicant vero, qui eam prae se ferunt in explicanda Quaestione diligentiam, annon ludificationi deputaturi sint, et praestigiarum loco habituri, si quis ex Novis illis Pontificiorum Doctoribus, qui pacificationis studio provincias et urbes obire credi volunt, blandulus accedat, et in causa momentosa, justificationis puta negocio, consensum cum Evangelicis profiteatur: se nimirum haud invito animo doctrinam amplecti de justificatione per imputatam Christi Domini nostri justitiam, dummodo distinctione adhibita rem explicare liceat; Quia scilicet justitia Christi variis modis accipi potest. 1. Pro actionibus illis ad legis divinae regulam exactissimis, quibus Christus et vivens et moriens plenissimum Patris sui mandatis obsequium praestitit. 2. Pro habituali illa et inhaerente justitia, qua Christi anima splendidissime enituit. 3. Pro justitia interna et habituali, qua unicuique fidelium subjective inest, sed quae justitia Christi merito dici possit, quoniam a Christo, Christique Spiritu, tanquam autore, in nos defluit. Hoc ergo ultimo sensu, agnoscere se, in controversia justificationis, imputationem justitiae Christi: at vero si prima et secunda significatione Christi justitiam accipiamus, se justitiae Christi imputationem nullam agnoscere, sed tanquam absurdam rejicere. Consensum certe in hoc negocio ita explicatum, nemo est, qui non conqueratur Ludibrium esse, potius quam consensum. &c.

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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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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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