On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §536 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 9: status: actual cut from hereditary; imputation precedes

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You may think you can avoid these arguments by saying that by sin, ten hamartian, both are understood, both Adam's actual sin, and the original vice born from it; but that is not allowed you by the status of the question which is treated between us. For it is instituted concerning Adam's actual sin cut off from hereditary vice. For you will have the first actual sin to have been imputed to Adam and to us, and because imputed, this penalty to have been inflicted on Adam and on us, namely original vice or corruption. And so according to your opinion that corruption does not cohere with Adam's actual sin except by the intervention of divine imputation. Therefore, imputation comes before corruption in nature. Therefore the imputation of Adam's actual sin cut off from hereditary corruption must be proved by you, not however of it joined and confused with that.

Latin

Putabis fortasse te horum argumentorum aciem declinare posse, dicendo, per peccatum τὴν ἁμαρτίαν intelligi utrumque & peccatum actuale Adami, & natum ex eo vitium originale; sed id tibi non licet per statum quaestionis, quae inter nos versatur. Est enim instituta de peccato actuali Adami praeciso a vitio haereditario. Vis enim primum peccatum actuale Adamo & nobis fuisse imputatum, & quia imputatum, inflictam Adamo & nobis hanc poenam, nimirum vitium seu corruptionem originalem. Itaque secundum tuam sententiam corruptio ista cum peccato actuali Adami non cohaeret, nisi divinae imputationis interventu. Quare imputatio naturae ordine corruptionem antecedit. Est igitur peccati actualis Adami praecisi a corruptione haereditaria imputatio tibi probanda, non autem cum ea coniuncti ac confusi.

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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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