On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §169 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 2: Why the parallel with Christ's righteousness does not fit

Click or tap any sentence to jump there. The side buttons skip a paragraph.

Placeus. This likeness is not a parallel but an opposite. To that deceitful charlatan I am as unlike as white to black.st, he would pretend to have listed every sense of Christ's righteousness, yet omit the one most decisive in justification: that singular obedience he rendered by suffering death—death, I say, of the cross—which is commonly called passive righteousness and which all Protestants without hesitation believe is imputed to believers, while about imputing active righteousness (the only sense D. Garissoles mentioned) there is some difference of opinion that does not disturb the Church's peace. I, by contrast, reviewed every sense of Adam's first sin and omitted none. Second, he would say that Christ's righteousness, taken in a sense in which all Protestants constantly deny it is imputed, is imputed; whereas I affirmed that Adam's sin is imputed to posterity in the sense in which all Protestants constantly hold it is. So he would invent a plainly false consensus with the Evangelicals: for who among them ever taught that the inhering righteousness we have from Christ is imputed to us for justification? The consensus I profess is true, and no one who is not a Pelagian denies it or can deny it.

Latin

PLAC. Hoc simile non est appositum, sed oppositum. Huic enim blandulo praestigiatori tam sum dissimilis quam album nigro. Primo ille se enumerasse prae se ferret omnes acceptiones justitiae Christi, cum tamen unam omitteret in justificationis negotio maxime momentosam, qua justitia Christi accipitur pro singulari illa obedientia quam praestitit patiendo mortem, mortem, inquam, crucis; quae vulgo justitia passiva appellatur, et imputari fidelibus ab omnibus Protestantibus sine dubitatione creditur, cum de imputatione justitiae activae, quam solam D. Gar. commemoravit, sit aliqua sententiarum discrepantia, quae pacem Ecclesiae non turbat. Ego vero primi Adae peccati acceptiones omnes recensui, nullam praetermisi. Secundo ille Christi justitiam eo sensu acceptam imputari diceret, quo sensu accepta imputari negatur constanter ab omnibus Protestantibus. Ego vero peccatum Adami eo sensu posteris imputari affirmavi, quo sensu iis imputari omnes Protestantes constanter tenent. Itaque ille consensum fingeret cum Evangelicis plane falsum: Quis enim unquam Evangelicorum docuit justitiam inhaerentem, quam habemus a Christo, nobis ad justificationem imputari? Quem autem ego profiteor consensum, is verus est, neque negatur, aut negari potest a quoquam non Pelagiano.

Report a mistake in this passage

About this text

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.

Printed text used

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.

Report a mistake