On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §476 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 9: truth needs no art; commentary confuses the status

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If room is to be given to conjecture, you wished by that means to occupy and fortify the minds of readers, lest they be wounded by the stings of my replies and reasons. In which, if this was your counsel, you seem to me to have distrusted and hurt your cause. For truth does not desire an art of this kind; simple, open, ingenuous, candid, even when it is humble, it breathes something noble, where (in which it is stronger than every thing) and trusting the God of truth it then most rejoices and shines and gleams, when it is compared with its contrary, however painted. But that, whether it was done by you with that counsel or another, disturbs our dispute, and scatters it, and forces much to be repeated.

Latin

Si conjecturae locus dandus est, ea ratione animos lectorum occupare voluisti ac praemunire, ne mearum responsionum & rationum aculeis laederentur. In quo, si hoc tuum consilium fuit, videris mihi causae tuae diffidisse ac obfuisse. Veritas enim artem hujusmodi non desiderat; simplex, aperta, ingenua, candida, humilis etiam cum sit, generosum quid spirat, ubi (qua omni re fortior est) & Deo veritatis fidens tum maxime laetatur & splendet & fulget, cum suo contrario, ut ut fucato, comparatur. Id autem, sive isto sive alio consilio a te sit factum, nostram disputationem conturbat, & distrahit, & multa cogit repetere.

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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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