On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §356 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 6: all by permission — yet occult counsel not ordinary nature

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of this—that there is nothing at all in the government of the whole world that is done with God unknowing or unwilling, that happens without God's permission, where God's wisdom does not shine, that is not administered justly, that is, from God's unmoved and undeflected rectitude? Yet no one will therefore say these things are done from God's occult, just, admirable, inscrutable counsel even when trees grow, and meadows are varied with flowers, and animals propagate their species, and worms are formed from the earth. For those things certainly are all from wisdom and providence, and that most right and most consulted. But Scripture is accustomed to refer God's just, occult, marvelous counsel not to the common administration of such created things, but to a singular dispensation and economy in certain works: as when Paul says, Rom. 11:33, that God's judgments are inscrutable and his ways past finding out.

Latin

GAR. Quid quod nihil est omnino in totius mundi gubernatione, quod inscio, vel invito Deo fiat, quod sine permissione Dei eveniat, ubi non Dei sapientia eluceat, quod non juste, id est, ex immota & indeflexa Dei rectitudine administretur? Neque tamen propterea dicet aliquis haec fieri ex occulto, justo, admirabili, inscrutabili, Dei consilio, etiam cum arbores crescunt, & prata variegantur floribus, & animalia propagant speciem, & vermes ex terra formantur. Sunt enim certe illa omnia ex sapientia & providentia, eaque rectissima & consultissima. Sed justum, occultum, mirabile Dei consilium, non ad communem eiusmodi rerum creatarum administrationem Scriptura referre solet, sed ad singularem in certis operibus dispensationem & oeconomiam: ut cum dicit Paulus Roman. XI. 33. judicia Dei esse inscrutabilia, & vias eius impervestigabiles.

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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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