On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §387 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 7: Heirs lose property without the father's crime being imputed

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Certainly there is no need of such an imputation for them to be deprived of those goods. For it is enough to that end that the parent, by whatever reason at last—by war's disaster, or a lord's injustice, or a neighbor's injury, or some other reason without any crime of unfaithfulness—lose as Courtier, or even sell, and spend the money: the heirs will be deprived of those same goods without any imputation of unfaithfulness, or a judge's sentence, for this sole cause—that no one gives what he does not have. Sons are heirs of the paternal goods. But what the father either lost or sold is no longer among the paternal goods. But if a human judge imputes the father's crime to the sons, is God to be thought to do the same? Is it fairer to measure our thoughts of God's justice by the norm of human laws than by God's own law? I do not think so. Hear God's law. Deut. 24:16. Fathers shall not be put to death for sons, nor sons put to death for fathers: each shall be put to death for his own sin.

Latin

Certe eiusmodi imputatione ut bonis illis priventur nihil opus est. Sufficit enim ad id, parentem quacumque demum ratione, vel bellica clade, vel Domini injustitia, vel vicini iniuria, vel aliqua alia ratione sine ullo infidelitatis crimine Aulicum amittere, aut etiam vendere, & pecuniam consumere: iisdem illis bonis privabuntur haeredes absque ulla infidelitatis imputatione, aut judicis sententia, hac sola de causa, quoniam nemo dat quod non habet. Filii haeredes sunt bonorum paternorum. Quae autem pater vel amisit, vel vendidit in bonis paternis non amplius sunt. Quod si humanus judex paternum crimen filiis imputat, num idem Deus facere censendus est? Utrum aequius est nostras de Dei justitia cogitationes ad legum humanarum normam exigere, quam ad ipsius Dei legem? non arbitror. Audi legem Dei. Deut. 24. 16. Ne morte afficiuntor patres pro filiis, ne filii morte afficiuntor pro patribus: quisque propter peccatum suum afficiuntor morte.

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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)
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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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