On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §410 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 7: The likeness of a king who makes war

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You seek a third likeness from the civil body. It is two-membered. First you set before our eyes a King making war on a neighboring people, who is held an enemy not only himself—he who willed to make it, decreed it in counsel, and pursued it with arms—but also all subjects, most of whom neither willed nor consented to this war, and though they do not act and stay at home, if they come into the enemies' hands they are caught unawares, shaken, and by right of war killed. Mark, I pray, how this likeness does not fit. First, if it is admitted, it must be confessed that as those who neither approve the war nor consent to it nor share the King's counsel are taken and slain by the enemy, so even if there were no vice in us and our will abhorred sin, Adam's actual sin would still be imputed to us—which many who feel with you dare not confess. Next, it would follow that not only Adam's first sin but also his other actual sins must be imputed to us, since he was head of the human race as long as he lived. Third, if the Head's sin is imputed to the body, why not also the body's sin to the head? For if Adam and the rest of men constitute one body or whole together, as the several members suit the whole body, so also the attributes of the several members suit the whole.

Latin

Tertiam similitudinem petis a corpore civili. Ea bimembris est. Primum enim nobis ob oculos constituis Regem inferentem bellum vicinae genti, qui non solum ipse qui inferre voluit, & in consilio decrevit, & armis persecutus est, habetur pro hoste, sed etiam omnes subditi, quorum plerique nec voluerunt, nec consenserunt huic bello, & quanquam non agunt, & domi manent, si tamen in manus hostium veniant, excipiuntur incauti, concutiuntur, & jure belli interficiuntur. Attende, quaeso, quam non quadret haec similitudo. Principio si admittatur, fatendum erit, quemadmodum ab hoste capiuntur, & necantur qui nec bellum probant, nec in id consentiunt, nec ullo modo consilii Regis sunt participes, sic etiamsi nihil in nobis esset vitii, atque a peccato voluntas nostra abhorreret, tamen nobis imputari peccatum actuale Adami: quod qui tecum sentiunt multi non audent fateri. Deinde, consequens esset non solum primum peccatum Adami, sed reliqua etiam eius peccata actualia nobis esse imputanda: quippe cum generis humani caput fuerit quamdiu vixit. Tertio, si peccatum Capitis imputatur corpori, cur non etiam peccatum corporis imputetur capiti? nam si Adam & reliqui homines unum simul corpus sive totum constituunt, quam toti corpori membra singula conveniunt, tam etiam singulorum membrorum attributa conveniunt toti.

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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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