On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §281 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 6: Better to believe inherited corruption than invent imputation

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For the rest, you shore up this answer of yours with questions. For, you say, who can otherwise give the reason of this infection and guilt? Why, I ask, did Adam by sinning destroy and subject to death not only a person but also the whole human nature—whereas other men by their actual sins wound persons and make themselves liable to death? How can an actual sin be justly imputed to us which we ourselves neither did, nor ordered, nor advised, nor approved by any consent of our will, and which with respect to us was in no way voluntary? Can you give the reason of these things? Would it not then be better firmly to believe the propagation of inherent corruption and of the guilt which follows it—Scripture teaching, experience bearing witness—and to leave to God the mode which you do not grasp, than beside and against Scripture to invent an imputation equally, or more, hard to grasp, and one that perverts and stains the justice of God?

Latin

Caeterum hanc tuam responsionem interrogationibus firmas. Nam, inquis, qui potest aliter reddi ratio hujus infectionis & reatus? cur quaeso Adam peccando perdidit, & morti subjecit, non tantum personam, sed etiam totam naturam humanam? Cum caeteri homines peccatis suis actualibus laedant personas, & se mortis reos efficiant. Qui potest nobis peccatum actuale juste imputari, quod neque fecimus ipsi, neque jussimus, neque suasimus, neque ullo voluntatis nostrae consensu probavimus, quodque nostro respectu nullo modo voluntarium fuit? Horumne tu rationem reddere potes? Annon igitur satius esset propagationem corruptionis inhaerentis & reatus qui eam sequitur, docente Scriptura, contestante experientia, firmiter credere; modum autem quem non capis Deo permittere, quam praeter & contra Scripturam imputationem excogitare aeque, aut magis difficilem captu, ac Dei justitiam pervertentem, & maculantem?

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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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