On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §364 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 6: permission reason; decree not-impede is not punish-impute

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imputation of the father's sin—not to the cause the learned man is driving, but to mine, who wished to give a reason why God permitted the propagation of sin. For not only was he not bound to hinder nature's course, but that he might not hinder it, laws constituted before the fall stood in the way, and the very sins of parents deserving desertion. This counsel or judgment, since it regards begetters insofar as they are to be permitted their nature, can somehow be said to regard the begotten: yet it is not therefore a judgment by which the begetter's sin is imputed to the one being begotten. For one thing is a decree of not hindering sin, or the contagion or outflow of sin from parent into children; another is a decree of inflicting punishment according to the law's threat.

Latin

PLAC. De peccati patris imputatione non ad causam quam agit vir doctus, sed ad meam, qui reddere rationem volui, cur Deus propagationem peccati permiserit. Non modo enim non tenebatur impedire naturae cursum, sed ne impediret, obstabant constitutae ante lapsum leges, & ipsa generantium peccata desertionem promerentia. Hoc autem consilium seu judicium, cum spectet ad generantes eatenus sua naturae permittendos, aliquomodo ad genitos spectare dici potest: nec tamen propterea est judicium, quo generantis peccatum imputatur generando. Nam aliud est decretum de non impediendo peccato, aut peccati contagio seu dimanatione a parente in liberos, aliud decretum de irroganda secundum legis comminationem poena.

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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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