On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §360 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 6: Calvin — nature vs judgment; counsel not forensic impute

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alvin opposes nature to God's judgment in this business, he does not do it so as to deny that corruption flowed by natural propagation from Adam into posterity, nor by God's judgment does he understand a forensic imputation of Adam's actual sin, or an infliction of punishment. We say, he says, that man is corrupted by a natural viciousness, but one which did not flow from nature. That it flowed from nature we deny, to signify that it is rather an adventitious quality which befell man than a substantial property implanted from the beginning. By judgment, or rather counsel, of God he understands that by which God permitted and preordained both Adam's fall and the propagation of the fall—which we demonstrated more fully in cap. XIII of this Manuscript, and which is nowhere refuted by the learned man.

Latin

PLAC. Cum Calvinus opponit naturam judicio Dei in hoc negotio, non id facit, ut neget naturali propagatione ab Adamo in posteros manasse corruptionem, nec per judicium Dei intelligit judiciariam imputationem peccati actualis Adami, aut poenae inflictionem. Dicimus, inquit, naturali hominem vitiositate corruptum, sed quae a natura non fluxerit. A natura fluxisse negamus, ut significemus adventitiam magis esse qualitatem, quae homini acciderit, quam substantialem proprietatem quae ab initio indita fuerit. Per judicium, aut potius consilium, Dei intelligit illud, quo Deus permisit & praeordinavit ut lapsum Adami, sic lapsus propagationem; id quod a nobis cap. XIII. huius Manuscripti fusius demonstratum est, nec uspiam refutatur a viro docto.

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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.

Printed text used

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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