On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §206 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 3: Remarks on the treatise's first two chapters

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Chapter III. Certain observations on the first and second chapters of the Treatise—some praised, some refuted.

In your first chapter you set the state of the question. With that settled, chapter two digresses to prove that every human being is infected with original sin and so stands exposed to this life's miseries and to death. To what end, I do not see. You yourself admit, in the closing words of chapter 2, that we have no quarrel on that point. I had already proved the same in the Theses you attack—briefly, yes, but with many sound arguments, strong and numerous; you polished some of them and skipped others. Reading through, I marked several things worth notice: some true, yet hostile to the case you are pressing; others that seem to me to clash both with the truth and with my own view.

Latin

CAP. III. Observata quaedam in primo & secundo Capite Tractatus, & alia laudata, alia refutata. PRIMO Capite tui tractatus statum quaestionis constituisti. Eo constituto Capite secundo digrederis ad probandum, omnes homines esse infectos peccato originali, & ideo omnibus hujus vitae miseriis mortique obnoxios. quo consilio, equidem nescio. Nam tu ipse fateris extremis verbis cap. 2. nullam ea de re inter nos esse controversiam: Et vero id ipsum Thesibus quas oppugnas probaveram, paucis quidem verbis, sed argumentis multis & validis, robore & numero praestantibus, quorum quaedam expolivisti, quaedam praetermisisti. Notavi autem inter legendum nonnulla digna observatu, vel quia vera sunt, sed causae quam agis repugnantia, vel quia tam veritati quam meae sententiae adversari mihi videntur.

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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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