On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §297 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 6: If imputation is God's free act, Scripture must reveal it

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ave a sure reply ready: that the imputation of the first sin is a free and voluntary action of God, from God's fixed counsel and judgment, not depending on the order of nature alone. And that no one was God's counselor, bound to know those things and to answer concerning them which God refused to reveal in His word. That it is enough for us to know the thing itself—namely that all sinned in Adam, and his guilt came upon all unto condemnation, and so that first sin descends upon all by imputation. That the reasons of that judgment are with God, whose ways are unsearchable, and His judgments a great deep. Romans 11:33. Psalm 36:7. immediate imputation of the first sin is a free and voluntary action of God, it cannot be known unless it has been revealed in Scripture. But it is not revealed in Scripture, nor do the places repeated here by the learned man have any force to prove it, as has partly already appeared, and will partly be made plain from what is to be said.

Latin

GAR. Nobis certa responsio suppetit, imputationem primi peccati esse actionem Dei liberam & voluntariam, ex certo Dei consilio judicioque, non ex solius naturae ordine dependentem. Neminem autem fuisse Dei consiliarium, qui ea nosse, & de iis respondere teneatur, quae Deus in verbo suo revelare noluit. Sufficere nobis ipsius rei notitiam, omnes scilicet in Adamo peccasse, & ipsius reatum super omnes venisse in condemnationem, atque ita primum illud peccatum in omnes imputatione descendere. Rationes illius judicii penes Deum esse cujus viae sunt impervestigabiles, & eius judicia abyssus multa. Rom. xi. 33. Psalm. xxxvi. 7. PLAC. Si immediata imputatio primi peccati est actio Dei libera & voluntaria, ea nisi in Scriptura revelata fuerit, sciri non potest. Atqui non est in Scriptura revelata, neque ad eam probandam ullam vim habent loca a viro docto hic repetita, ut partim jam patuit, partim ex dicendis manifestum fiet.

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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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