On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §227 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 4: Tertia — violatio conditionis is not poena

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Third proof: breaking the condition or precept is not itself the penalty announced against the breaker. But loss of righteousness is breaking the condition or precept. Therefore that loss is not the announced penalty. The major is obvious; I prove the minor as follows. Whatever the law forbids is a breach of the law. The law forbids righteousness being absent from a man as firmly as it commands righteousness to be in him. Therefore that absence—which you call spiritual death—is a breach of the law.

Latin

Tertia, violatio conditionis sive praecepti non est poena transgressori denunciata. Sed privatio justitiae est violatio conditionis seu praecepti. Ergo non est poena transgressori denunciata. Major probatione non eget: Minorem sic demonstro. Quod lex prohibet, id legis violatio est. At lex prohibet absentiam justitiae in homine (tam certe quam jubet homini justitiam inesse.) Ergo absentia justitiae (quae tibi mors est spiritualis) violatio est legis.

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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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