On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §440 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 8: even if bound when nonexistent — obeyed; ate in Adam not in us

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But grant that that interdict bound us to obedience for that time when we did not yet exist, when Adam alone was in paradise with his wife—what did it require of us? That we should not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? We obeyed: for those who at that time could not eat certainly did not eat. We ate, you will say, in Adam. Well and good: therefore we did not eat in ourselves. Since therefore in one Adam we ate that fruit, it was fitting that we also be punished in one Adam: and since we did not eat in our own persons, we ought not to have been punished in our own persons.

Latin

Sed fac interdictum illud nos ad obedientiam obligasse pro eo tempore quo nondum eramus, quo solus erat cum uxore in paradiso Adamus, quid a nobis requirebat? Ut ne ederemus de fructu arboris scientiae boni & mali? Paruimus: nam qui edere tum temporis non poteramus, profecto non edimus. Edimus, inquies, in Adamo. Bene habet: non igitur edimus in nobis. Quandoquidem igitur in uno Adamo manducavimus illum fructum, decuit nos etiam puniri in uno Adamo: ac cum in nostris personis non manducaverimus, non oportuit nos puniri in nostris personis.

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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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