On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §219 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 4: Cameron & Amyraut: vita promissa in sanctitate

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y. The minor is not simply true, if one hears Cameron, Lectures on the Word of God, chapter 7: "Man's highest good is a perfect state of soul and body—of the whole man—complete in every respect, so that nothing further can or ought to be asked. This state and condition is the image of God. The image of God sits in two things: sanctity, and the blessed immortality that follows sanctity." If the life promised to Adam was his perfect state, and that life consists in sanctity, then the promised life consisted in sanctity.

Nor does the most illustrious Amyraut speak otherwise, On the Three Covenants, Thesis II: "The promise of that first covenant had to consist in perpetual life, abounding in every kind of good that could belong to man's mind and body." But ought not justice and sanctity to be counted among the goods of the mind?

Latin

GAR. Resp. Minorem non esse simpliciter veram, si audiatur Camero praelect. de verbo Dei cap. 7. Summum hominis bonum est animi & corporis, adeoque totius hominis status perfectus atque omnibus numeris absolutus, nihil ut ultra requiri vel debeat, vel possit amplius. Hic vero status & conditio est imago Dei. Ceterum imago Dei in duobus sita est, in sanctitate, & qua sanctitatem sequitur, beata immortalitate. Si vita promissa Adae erat status ipsius perfectus, & ea vita consistit in sanctitate. Ergo vita promissa consistebat in sanctitate. Nec aliter Clar. Amyraldus, De trib. foeder. Thes. II. Promissio foederis illius primi consistere debuit in vita perpetua, & affluente omni bonorum genere, qua tum in animum, tum in corpus hominis competere potuissent. Justitia autem & sanctitas nonne inter animi bona censeri debent?

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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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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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