On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §459 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 8: poison-spread vs imputation — imputation is God's work

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But he is not the cause of a common evil unless either he himself breathed that evil into all, or at least produced in one such an evil as of itself, by its own natural force, spread and propagated itself into all like poison, like a plague. Imputation, the infliction of penalty, is God's work, not the ancient serpent's.

Latin

Non est autem causa mali communis, nisi aut illud ipse omnibus inspiraverit, aut saltem tale malum in uno produxerit, quod sponte, per se, naturali vi sua sese in omnes ut venenum, ut pestis, diffuderit, & propagaverit. Imputatio, inflictio poenae Dei opus est, non serpentis antiqui.

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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.

Printed text used

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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