On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §203 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 2: similitudes — cannot refuse; condition worsened

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A punished person cannot choose to take the penalty, refuse it, or cast it off. We are hit by this corruption from another in the same way: refusing or casting it off is not in our power. A penalty also worsens the state of the one it strikes. Stained by this corruption, Adam became worse—more ignoble, fouler, more wretched—than he would have been without it.

Latin

Ut non est in ejus qui punitur potestate poenam admittere, vel non admittere aut etiam excutere, sic ab alio corruptione ista afficimur, nec in nobis situm est eam non admittere, aut excutere. Ut poena ejus cui infligitur conditionem mutat in deteriorem, sic hac corruptione inquinatus Adamus deterior, ignobilior, foedior, miserior, quam alioqui fuisset, evasit.

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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.

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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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