On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §200 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 2: The question of penalty begins by defining terms

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Before we go further, the later question on the penalty tied to this imputed sin needs clearing. Two moves first: sort out what penalty means, and keep Adam distinct from us. Penalty can be named properly or improperly, and even the proper sense branches many ways. I will not catalogue every species you already know—that would be long and beside our point. Hold only the sense in which you and the other brothers whose case you defend against me call hereditary corruption a penalty.

Latin

Posterior quaestio de hujus peccati imputati poena etiam ipsa aliquam explicationem desiderat. Primum autem poena distinguenda est; deinde separandus a nobis Adamus. Poena dicitur vel proprie, vel improprie. Proprie rursus multipliciter: sed nihil opus est omnia poenarum genera quae te nosse arbitror, enumerare, id enim cum longum esset, tum ad rem quam agimus inutile. Satis est tenere quo sensu corruptio haereditaria poena dicatur a te aliisque fratribus nostris, quorum sententiam adversus me tueri vis.

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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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