On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §325 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 6: vs Pighius — hereditary vice proximate death-cause

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Which was the opinion of Pighius and Catharinus and Salmeron, rightly condemned by our Churches: for if you believe there is in infants an original inherent vice which is truly sin, which suffices for condemning the human race, which makes infants hiding in the maternal womb guilty of eternal death before God—why, when you ask why infants die, does it not satisfy the one who answers that in them the cause of death is the vice or sin hereditarily inherent? For this is to give the proximate cause of infants' death, whose remote cause is Adam's fall.

Latin

Quae Pighii & Catharini, & Salmeronis fuit sententia ab Ecclesiis nostris iure damnata: nam si credis in infantibus vitium esse originale inhaerens, quod vere peccatum sit, quod generi humano damnando sufficiat, quod infantes in utero materno delitescentes aeternae mortis reos coram Deo peragat, cur tibi quaerenti, cur infantes moriantur, non satisfacit qui respondet, in illis causam esse mortis vitium seu peccatum hereditario inhaerens? Hoc enim est mortis infantium proximam causam afferre, cuius remota est lapsus Adami.

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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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