On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §201 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 2: strictissime poena — three conditions; Ursinus fiat iustitia

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On your account this is penalty in the tightest proper sense, and you put three marks on it. The Law must threaten it. Justice must demand that the Judge lay it on. The Judge must lay it on so justice is done—or so justice is satisfied. Ursinus, in the Catechetical Explanation, faced the objection that God should not have punished Adam with such a penalty, and answered: Let justice be done, though the world perish.

Latin

Nempe statuis esse poenam strictissime ac propriissime sic dictam, cujus hae sunt conditiones. 1. Lex eam comminatur. 2. Iustitia ut infligatur a Iudice exigit. 3. Iudex eam infligit ut fiat iustitia, sive ut iustitiae satisfiat. Itaque Ursinus in explicat. Catechet. Cum sibi objecisset non debuisse Deum culpam Adami tali poena punire, respondit fiat iustitia & pereat Mundus.

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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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