On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §545 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 9: The reply that sinning in another means imputation

Click or tap any sentence to jump there. The side buttons skip a paragraph.

I respond 1. It is one thing if you say simply that someone sins, another if you say that someone has sinned in another. For the former, surely by force of the word, does not signify imputation of sin, but this latter designates imputation. For how can those who existed many ages afterward be said to have already before sinned in another, except because he exercised their act, and he of the posterity is so reputed, as if they themselves had committed it?

Latin

GAR. Respondeo 1. Aliud est si dicas simpliciter aliquem peccare, aliud si dicas aliquem in alio peccavisse. Nam illud sane ex vi vocis non significat imputationem peccati, sed hoc posterius designat imputationem. Quomodo enim qui multis post saeculis exstiterunt, dici possunt iam antea in alio peccasse, nisi quia ille eorum actum exercuit, & qui posterorum ita reputatur, ac si ipsi illum commisissent?

Report a mistake in this passage

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.

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.

Report a mistake