On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §312 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 6: erotema 5 — first generative act

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h it is asked. If the first act of sinning was an act of nature, why not also the first act of generating, so that in Adam we should be said to have been begotten as Cain, or as Seth? Reply. I pass over the learned man's paralogism, which ascribes Seth's begetting to the first act by which Adam generated, though that could only have been the third, Gen. 4. I ask, is this paralogism? I fear it rather belongs to the Learned Man, who does not seem to have noticed the force of the disjunction I had used; namely there was a twofold act of Adam's generating: one absolutely first, the other first in the kind of those from whom we spring.

Latin

GAR. Quinto quaeritur. Si primus actus peccandi fuit actus naturae, cur non & primus actus generandi, ut in Adamo dicamur Cainum, aut Sethum genitos esse? Resp. Mitto viri docti paralogismum, Sethi genituram primo actui, quo Adamus generavit, attribuenti, qui tamen nonnisi tertius esse potuit, Gen. 4. PLAC. Quale, quaeso, est hoc paralogismum? Vereor ne id potius Viro docto tribui debeat, qui animadvertisse non videtur vim disjunctionis qua usus fueram; nempe duplex fuit actus generandi Adami, unus absolute primus, alter primus in genere eorum unde orti sumus.

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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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