On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §443 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 8: sentence syllogism — if penalty common, sin common

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You go on and draw an argument from the sentence which God pronounced to Adam fallen into sin in these words, because you obeyed your wife's voice, and ate from the tree, and so on. From there you argue thus: If the penalty was common, the sin ought also to have been common. But the penalty was common. Therefore the sin also. You prove the major by this syllogism: A just Judge does not inflict a common penalty on all men except for a sin common to all. It occurs to your mind that this whole can be conceded by me, who acknowledge a sin common to all men, namely hereditary vice worthy of common penalties.

Latin

Pergis & ducis argumentum a sententia, quam Deus Adamo prolapso in peccatum pronunciavit his verbis, quia paruisti voci uxoris tuae, & comedisti ex arbore &c. Inde sic argumentaris, Si poena fuit communis, peccatum debuit etiam esse commune. Atqui poena fuit communis. Ergo etiam peccatum. Majorem probas hoc syllogismo, Justus Judex non infligit poenam communem omnibus hominibus, nisi ob commune peccatum omnium. Subit animum tuum hoc totum posse a me concedi, qui agnosco peccatum commune omnium hominum, nempe vitium haereditarium dignum communibus poenis.

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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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