On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §375 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 7: dying-you-die is not privation of justice; Christ blocks

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ed, I say—I have already proved that by the words dying you shall die is not to be understood a death seated in the privation of justice. For what is more absurd than either that a law should threaten the privation of justice, or that a judge should strip of justice those whom he judges? I have also proved that God did not fulfill that threat of the law in Adam, on account of Christ's future satisfaction. And how could it have been fulfilled, if by those words death of body and eternal death were signified? To punish according to the law's threat and not to punish; to impute sin and not to impute; to justify the guilty and yet in him fulfill the law's threat—if I understand anything—so fight that they cannot stand together. Far be it therefore that I believe God stripped Adam of original justice and made him from just into unjust.

Latin

PLAC. Argui, inquam, iam probavi verbis morte morieris non esse intelligendam mortem sitam in privatione justitiae. Quid enim absurdius, quam, aut legem comminari privationem justitiae, aut judicem spoliare eos quos judicat justitia? Probavi etiam Deum illam comminationem legis non adimplevisse in Adamo, ob futuram Christi satisfactionem. Et quomodo potuit adimpleri, si verbis illis mors significabatur corporis & aeterna? punire secundum legis comminationem & non punire: peccatum imputare & non imputare: justificare reum & tamen in eo adimplere legis comminationem, si quid intelligo, ita pugnant, ut consistere simul nequeant. Absit igitur ut credam Deum spoliavisse Adamum justitia originali, ac eum ex justo fecisse injustum.

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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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