On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §225 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 4: Secunda ratio — hoc fac et vives

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Second proof. The legal covenant's own promise and threat make the same point. Life was pledged under the formula "do this and you will live." Was that the spiritual life grounded in righteousness and holiness? Far from it. The law never promised the start, growth, or continuance of that life; it demanded them. Legal-covenant promises were conditional, and the condition was perfect righteousness kept without break. Life was promised only under that condition—so the thing promised cannot have been identical with righteousness itself already present. And the death the law threatened stood formally over against the promised life, not against the condition. Hence that death was not the absence or stripping-away of righteousness.

Latin

Secunda, Hoc potest illustrari & confirmari promissione & comminatione foederis legalis. Pollicebatur vitam, hoc fac & vives. Quam? spiritualem illam positam in justitia & sanctitate? nihil minus: eius nec initium, nec progressum, nec continuationem lex promittebat, sed exigebat. Promissiones foederis legalis erant conditionales. Conditio erat perfecta justitia perpetuo conservata. Sub hac conditione promittebatur vita. Quare vita promissa non potuit sita esse in praesentia justitiae. Iam autem mors, quam lex comminabatur, opposita erat formaliter non conditioni, sed vitae promissae: non consistebat igitur in absentia seu privatione 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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