On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §235 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 4: Adam's first; animal analogy

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Placeus. He never states the conclusion; those two premises cannot yield what he needs to prove. The question is not every law-breaking, but Adam's first; not any loss of righteousness, but the loss of the righteousness Adam had before the fall. My minor is about that breach and that loss. Garissoles' minor must either be universal or name that case; neither done, nothing against me follows.

The same pattern would overturn endless true propositions—even "man is an animal." Things that can really be separated are not identical; something can be an animal and yet not a man.

Latin

PLAC. Conclusionem non expressit: haud enim ex duabus illis praemissis concludi potest id quod ei probandum incumbebat. Agitur enim non de omni violatione legis, sed de tali, nempe prima illa Adami, nec de qualibet privatione justitiae, sed de privatione justitiae qua praeditus erat ante lapsum Adamus. De hac enim violatione & privatione intelligenda est argumenti mei propositio minor. Aut igitur universalem esse oportebat Viri Docti Minorem, aut nominatim de illa privatione & violatione intelligi. Neutrum cum sit factum, nihil potest concludi mihi repugnans. Deinde simili argumento possent infinitae propositiones verissimae refelli, etiam ista, homo est animal. Nam ea non sunt unum & idem quae reapse possunt separari. Atqui potest aliquid esse animal, nec tamen esse homo.

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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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