On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §366 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 7: Examen — three similitudes; first from the courtier

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CAPUT VII. Examination of three similitudes by which the imputation of Adam's first actual sin is illustrated in the same Cap. IV. You at length try to illustrate your infamous imputation by certain similitudes, and to smear it with a certain paint of probability, which it is my mind to weigh and to show how little they favor it. The first you take from a courtier friend of the King who, guilty of unfaithfulness and lese-majesty, is deprived of titles, dignities, and estates which he had acquired for himself and his. For is it not true, you ask, that he could have kept all these for himself and his posterity, provided he were faithful? Therefore the unfaithfulness either of the father or of the grandfather harmed the whole family. And if the posterity are considered stripped of those goods and made infamous, is not that delict said to be the cause of the lost goods and of the infamy, and imputed to the whole family? for just as he had received for himself and the whole family under a condition, so in sinning against the condition the whole family sinned and fell in him.

Latin

CAPUT VII. Examen trium similitudinum, quibus imputatio primi peccati actualis Adami illustratur eodem Cap. IV. Tu tandem infamem tuam imputationem illustrare quibusdam similitudinibus, ac quodam probabilitatis fuco oblinire niteris, quas expendere est animus, & ostendere quam ei non faveant. Primam sumis ab aulico Regis amico, qui infidelitatis & laesae-majestatis reus privatur titulis, dignitatibus, & fundis, quos sibi & suis acquisiverat. Nunquid enim, inquis, verum est potuisse sibi & posteris haec omnia servare, modo fidelis sit? Infidelitas ergo sive patris, sive avi, toti familiae obfuit. Et, si posteri considerentur illis bonis exuti, & infames facti, nonne dicitur delictum illius causa esse bonorum perditorum, & infamiae, & toti familiae imputatum? nam sicut sibi toti familiae acceperat sub conditione, sic in conditionem peccans tota familia in illo peccavit & cecidit.

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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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