On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §446 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 8: proximate cause in us — why impute alien actual sin?

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Why do you seek so far the proximate cause of the evils which we all suffer, when it meets you near at hand? Why do you seek it in Adam when in each of us it shows itself? Why is it needful that God impute to us an alien sin, when in us he finds a sin which merits those penalties? Why should he impute an actual sin which we did neither in act nor in potency, when he sees in each of us a vice actually inhering, worthy of those penalties?

Latin

Cur tam longe quaeris causam proximam malorum quae omnes patimur, cum occurrat in proximo? Cur eam quaeris in Adamo cum in nobis singulis se prodat? Cur opus est ut Deus nobis imputet peccatum alienum, cum in nobis inveniat peccatum quod illas poenas meretur? Cur imputet actuale quod neque actu neque potentia fecimus, cum videat in singulis nobis vitium actu inhaerens dignum illis poenis?

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About this text

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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