On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §296 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 6: Ad 6 — Christ vs Adam; vitium inherent

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To the sixth: Why is Christ called our righteousness and sanctification, and Adam not called our sin and corruption? Because we are justified by no other righteousness, sanctified by no other power, than Christ's. Therefore in Him all our righteousness and sanctification is to be sought. We cannot similarly say that we are damned by no sin but Adam's. For we are guilty of many others too, and to the universal corruption which we drew from Adam we too often add many habits, or particular determinations to certain objects; and that very sin of Adam is not ours by gift, or by imputation as Christ's righteousness is, but by reason of the vice propagated from it and inherent in us, which has power to condemn us not because it is Adam's, or flowed from Adam, but because by its nature it is a vice opposed to God's law. I have answered his little questions for Pelagius and Socinus: now let us see how he answers ours.

Latin

Ad 6. Cur Christus justitia & sanctificatio nostra dicitur, Adamus non dicitur peccatum & corruptio nostra? Quia nulla alia justitia justificamur, nulla alia virtute sanctificamur, quam Christi. Itaque in eo omnis nostra justitia & sanctificatio quaerenda. Non possumus similiter dicere, nullo nos peccato damnari, quam Adami. Nam & multorum aliorum sumus rei, & ad universalem corruptionem, quam ab Adamo traximus, multos habitus, seu particulares ad certa objecta determinationes nimis saepe adjungimus, & illud ipsum Adami peccatum non est nostrum donatione, aut imputatione ut Christi justitia, sed ratione propagati ex eo vitii nobis inhaerentis, quod vim habet nos condemnandi, non quia est Adami, aut profluxit ab Adamo, sed quia natura sua vitium est legi Dei repugnans. Ejus pro Pelagio & Socino quaestiunculis respondi: nunc videamus quomodo respondeat nostris.

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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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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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