On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §228 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 4: Garissoles distinguishes active and passive loss of righteousness

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Garissoles replies. I will not contest the major here; later we can ask whether breaking a divine precept (which is sin) can also be sin's penalty. On the minor I distinguish two privations of righteousness: active and passive. Active is the man's own bad acting by which he strips himself of the righteousness God had given him. Passive is God's stripping the man of that righteousness and of the gifts heaped on him. Grant that the active privation is the same as law-breaking; the passive still is not.

Latin

GAR. Respond. De majore litem hic non moveo: disputabitur inferius, an violatio praecepti divini, quae peccatum est, possit esse poena peccati. Ad minorem dico, distinguendam esse privationem justitiae, ut aliam activam nominemus, aliam passivam. Activa est, qua homo ipse male agendo justitia seipsum spoliat, qua Deus illum impertiverat: passiva qua Deus hominem justitia privat, & donis quibus ipsum cumularat. Si ergo agnoscimus privationem activam justitiae idem esse cum violatione legis; de privatione tamen passiva id merito negabitur.

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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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