On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §266 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 5: Adam's actual sin is not ours, so not justly imputed

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But, whatever the case, I contend that that actual sin of Adam is not our sin. Therefore it cannot justly be imputed to us. I grant that to impute is to ascribe, to attribute, to write to one's account: but certain things are to be observed in this place—first of all that distinction of imputation into earlier and later, or direct and indirect, which, when I was setting the state of the question, I explained in Cap. 2, and do not repeat here: I ask you to remember it. Next this also ought to meet our thought: that what is in dispute between us is not any imputation whatever, but a judicial one, which just punishment follows.

Latin

Sed, quicquid sit, Contendo peccatum illud Adami actuale nostrum peccatum non esse. Itaque nobis jure imputari non posse. Fateor imputare esse tribuere, attribuere, adscribere: sed quaedam sunt hoc loco observanda, in primis distinctio illa imputationis in antecedentem & consequentem seu immediatam & mediatam, quam, dum statum quaestionis constituerem, Cap. 2. explicavi, nec hic repeto: ejus ut memineris te rogo. Deinde illud etiam cogitationi nostrae obversari debet, agi inter nos de imputatione non qualibet, sed judiciaria, quam punitio justa sequatur.

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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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