On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §468 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 8: contrary rule granted; deny Adam's actual as formal sinner-maker

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But what do you conclude from there? (for to transfer all your words hither would be laborious, and not necessary.) Just as, then, you say, a man is justified and blessed because he believes in him who justifies the ungodly; and his faith is imputed to him for righteousness without works, because sin is not imputed, it follows by the rule of contraries that a man is damned and miserable who does not believe in God, because sin is imputed to him unto condemnation. I concede. You add, and in general every sin which he committed. I admit. You subjoin, and in species this sin of Adam, which constitutes him a sinner. This I now deny, if, as is fair, by Adam's sin you understand his actual sin, and also immediate imputation.

Latin

Sed quid inde concludis? (nam omnia tua verba huc transferre operosum esset, nec necessarium.) Quemadmodum igitur, inquis, homo justificatur & beatus est, quia credit in eum qui justificat impium; & fides eius illi imputatur ad justitiam sine operibus, quia peccatum non imputatur, sequitur ex regula contrariorum, hominem damnari & miserum esse qui non credit in Deum, quia peccatum illi imputatur ad condemnationem. Concedo. Addis, & in genere omne peccatum quod commisit. Fateor. Subjungis, & in specie hoc peccatum Adami, quod ipsum constituit peccatorem. Hoc jam nego, siquidem, ut par est, per peccatum Adami ejus peccatum actuale intelligis, necnon imputationem immediatam.

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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)
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Also checked machine-read text of the 1661 volume (Latin)

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