On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §330 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 6: generative faculty not moral

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I scarcely trusted my eyes when I read that the generative faculty could have a place among the moral faculties: Will moral philosophy also snatch it hereafter from the physicists and physicians as from possessors of bad faith, and claim it as her own peculiar? What has that faculty, that it ought rather to be raised to the dignity of morals than the concoctive, or nutritive, or augmentative, which philosophers have hitherto taught are not partakers of reason, but by their nature brute and unaware of themselves, and which belong to man not as he is man, but as he has a nature common with other animals? Finally, what law of the Decalogue is there to whose precept the faculty of generating is to be believed subject? For all, I hope, agree that morals are bounded by the Decalogue. But at least it is subject to morals. Nay, not even that is simply true; otherwise it would always be moved by the empire of the will, which it is certain often happens otherwise. Nor does a woman always either conceive when she wills, or not conceive when she does not will.

Latin

GAR. Ego vero vix oculis meis credidi cum legerem facultatem genitricem inter facultates morales locum habere posse: An etiam ut eam physicis & medicis tanquam male fidei possessoribus ereptam, moralis philosophia in posterum sibi tanquam proprium peculium vindicet? Quid vero habet facultas ista, quare potius ad moralium dignitatem evehi debeat, quam concoctrix, vel altrix, vel augmentatrix, quas hactenus docuerunt Philosophi non esse rationis participes, sed natura sua brutas ac sui nescias, quaeque homini conveniant, non qua homo est, sed qua naturam habet cum aliis animalibus communem? Denique quae lex erit Decalogi, cuius praecepto facultas generandi subjacere credenda sit? Moralia enim Decalogo circumscribi omnes, ut spero, consentiunt. At saltem moralibus subjecta est. Imo neque hoc simpliciter verum, alioqui ex imperio voluntatis semper moveretur, quod saepe aliter fieri certum. Neque foemina semper vel concipit, cum vult, vel non concipit, quando non vult.

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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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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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