On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §460 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 8: if only by imputation, evil's community not from serpent

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If therefore actual sin is not common to all except by imputation—because God imputes it to all—and original sin or inhering vice is not in us except because it is fixed in us by God as the penalty of that imputed actual, the community of evil is not from the serpent. Nor is that privation of original justice and hereditary corruption the serpent's virus which he breathed upon us, but (which I am reluctant to sayd's effect and work.

Latin

Si igitur peccatum actuale non est omnibus commune, nisi imputatione; quia Deus illud omnibus imputat, nec est in nobis peccatum originale seu vitium inhaerens, nisi quia nobis in poenam actualis illius imputati a Deo infigitur, mali communitas non est a serpente; Nec ista privatio justitiae originalis & corruptio haereditaria virus est serpentis, quod nobis afflavit, sed (quod horret animus meus dicere) Dei effectum & opus.

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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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