On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §253 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 4: eternal torment vs proper death

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y. The learned man grants that 'death' covers both bodily death and the eternal torment of hell, as we have heard. What then will he say if someone turns his own argument back on him: the same word in a law that should use ordinary language cannot be taken properly and metaphorically together; hell's torment is death only metaphorically, since only bodily death is death properly so called; therefore those words cannot mean that torment.

Latin

GAR. Resp. Agnoscit Vir doctus, mortis nomine, tum mortem corporalem, tum etiam aeternum inferorum cruciatum intelligi, ut audivimus. Quid ergo responsurus est, si quis hoc argumentum ipsi reponat; vocem eandem in lege, quae debeat verbis usitatis concipi, non posse simul proprie & metaphorice sumi: cruciatum autem inferorum esse mortem metaphorice dictam, cum sola corporalis sit mors proprie dicta: ergo non posse his verbis intelligi cruciatum illum.

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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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