On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §381 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 7: A judge should preserve justice, not take it away

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what is it to lose justice meritoriously, if not to deserve not to be justified by the judge, but to be condemned? For to deserve that as punishment the judge take from him the habit of justice is to deserve that the judge take away what is not, and do what seems to fight with the justice of the lawgiver and of the judge. For the judge is rather bound to conserve justice than to destroy it, and to take it from him who is endowed with it. Nor does it become him to make those whom he judges unjust and sinners. That the comparison he institutes between the faithful in the state of grace and Adam in the state of nature is not apt, no one, I think, fails to see. For they are opposed to each other—so far are they from being alike—the state of fallen nature and the state of grace. Adam's justice was a natural gift; the justice inhering in us is a supernatural gift.

Latin

PLAC. Primum quid est amittere justitiam meritorie, nisi mereri non justificari a judice, sed condemnari? Nam mereri, ut pro poena judex ab eo auferat justitiae habitum, est mereri ut judex tollat quod non est, & faciat id quod cum justitia legislatoris & judicis pugnare videtur. Tenetur enim potius judex conservare justitiam, quam destruere, & ab eo qui ea praeditus est, tollere. Nec enim eum decet eos, quos judicat, facere injustos & peccatores. Comparatio quam instituit inter fideles in statu gratiae, & Adamum in statu naturae, quam non sit apposita, nemo, opinor, non videt. Opponuntur enim inter se, tantum abest ut sint similes, status naturae lapsae, & status gratiae. Justitia Adami erat donum naturale, justitia nobis inhaerens est donum supernaturale.

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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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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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