On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §175 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 2: The senses differ in wording, not in substance

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Placeus: I thank the learned man for allowing nothing I say to go without fruit. Still, I hope this distinction will not lack its fruit in due time and place. The second and third senses do coincide in the same imputation, but they differ in how they are expressed and are diverse senses of the same name. I meant to distinguish the name, not the thing itself. If one true—that Adam's sin can be divided into the first actual sin and the first habitual sin, then Adam's sin taken in the second sense must be divided: the first member of the division will be Adam's sin taken in the first sense, and the second member Adam's sin in the third. Add the corruption propagated into us, commonly called old Adam and able to be called Adam's sin as well, and you have all the senses I listed—so there is no reason to reject them with such zeal.

Latin

PLAC. Magnas habeo Viro docto gratias non patienti quicquam a me dici absque fructu. Quanquam fructu, uti spero, non carebit haec distinctio suo tempore & loco. Coincidunt quidem secunda & tertia acceptio in eandem imputationem, sed differunt modo loquendi, & sunt eiusdem nominis acceptiones diversae. Distinguere autem nomen, non rem ipsam, volui. Si quis dicat, id quod verum est, peccatum Adae dividi posse in primum peccatum actuale, & primum peccatum habituale; dividendum erit peccatum Adae acceptum secundo modo: divisi primum membrum erit peccatum Adae sumptum primo modo, & secundum membrum erit peccatum Adae tertio modo. Quibus si addas propagatam in nos corruptionem, quae vetus Adam solet nuncupari, etiam peccatum Adae vocari posse, habebis omnes illas acceptiones quas enumeravi, nihil ut sit, quare tanto conatu rejiciantur.

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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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