On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §218 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 4: morte morieris — refuse spiritual death; Prima ratio; before

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Against this threefold life you set a threefold privation or death, denounced by God to Adam as penalty in the words "you shall die the death," and you claim that man was dead just as God had threatened. For my part (with your permission and that of those who agree with you) I cannot shift those words onto spiritual death—the loss of righteousness and sanctity. Hear my reasons, if you will, and weigh them; unless I am mistaken, they are not empty.

First reason. A threat answers a tacit promise, penalty answers reward, the death denounced answers the life promised. But the life tacitly promised to Adam was not justice or sanctity—unless you confuse the condition of the promise with the thing promised. Therefore the death denounced was not the privation of justice.

Latin

Huic triplici vitae triplicem opponis privationem seu mortem denunciatam a Deo Adamo ut poenam verbis, morte morieris, asserisque hominem, prout Deus minatus fuerat, mortuum esse. Ego vero (pace tua & aliorum, qui sic tecum sentiunt,) non possum verba illa morte morieris ad mortem spiritualem seu privationem justitiae & sanctitatis transferre. Audi, si placet, rationes meas, & expende: nam, nisi me fallit animus, non sunt de nihilo. Prima ratio. Comminatio opponitur tacite promissioni, poena praemio, mors denunciata vitae promissae. Atqui vita tacite promissa Adamo non erat justitia seu sanctitas, nisi velis promissionis conditionem cum re promissa confundere. Ergo mors denunciata non erat privatio justitiae.

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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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