On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §267 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 5: judicial act; own vs surety; Adam as ours; each own person

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Now such an imputation of sin is the act of a judge ascribing sin to someone by his sentence—that is, pronouncing someone guilty of a certain sin, and therefore to be visited with punishment. But sin is ascribed to someone either as to a sinner, or as to one who voluntarily sustains the sinner's person, as a surety: to the former as his own, to the latter as another's. If Adam's actual sin is imputed to us, it is ascribed not as another's, but as ours: for each of us, when he is conceived and born, bears his own person, not Adam's, whose surety he is not.

Latin

Est autem ejusmodi imputatio peccati, actus judicis sententia sua peccatum alicui tribuentis, hoc est, aliquem certi cujusdam peccati reum esse pronunciantis, ac propterea poena afficiendum. Tribuitur autem alicui peccatum vel tanquam peccatori, vel tanquam peccatoris personam ultro sustinenti, vadi: illi ut suum, huic ut alienum. Nobis si peccatum Adami actuale imputatur, tribuitur, non ut alienum, sed ut nostrum: suam enim quisque nostrum, cum concipitur & nascitur, personam, non Adami, cujus vas non est, gerit.

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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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