On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §454 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 8: false unjust imputation

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Consider, I beg you, what a false and unjust imputation would be, if this is not; And whether an action befits God which makes us sinners who otherwise were not sinners, and indeed formally, and of itself, and whether this is not to refer the cause of all our sins and evils to God; and give glory to your creator and redeemer. Call back to mind what I said in Cap. 3 of this examination § III. And do not think that opinion of yours was drawn and deduced from the fountains either of the ancient fathers, or of those who first and chiefly set hand to reforming the Church in the last century. Far otherwise did they think, as, God granting, I shall make plain in another Chapter. For now it is enough for me to untie the knots of your arguments.

Latin

Considera, quaeso, quae sit falsa & injusta imputatio, si haec non est; Et, an conveniat Deo actio, quae nos alioqui non peccatores, peccatores faciat, & quidem formaliter, & per se, & annon hoc sit causam omnium nostrorum peccatorum & malorum in Deum referre; & da gloriam creatori tuo & redemptori. Revoca in animum quae dixi Cap. 3. hujus examinis §. III. Neque puta tuam illam sententiam esse ex fontibus vel patrum antiquorum, vel eorum qui primi & praecipue manum admoverunt Ecclesiae Reformandae seculo superiore, haustam & deductam. Longe aliter illi senserunt, ut, Deo dante, faciam alio Capite manifestum. Nunc mihi satis est tuorum argumentorum nodos solvere.

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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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