On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §55 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 7: Garissoles Resp. 1 — alleged confession said to overturn the corruption reading

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What does the learned man reply? "First," he says, "let the respondent's confession be noted: for while he acknowledges that that sin which is said to have entered through one man is one sin of one man, namely Adam's, by the same reason he confutes and overthrows all those arguments by which another above was striving to confirm that here by the name of sin not Adam's own sin, but only our inward and original corruption, is to be understood." Does he so confute and overthrow all those arguments? Can another's arguments — many, and strong, and long after that affirmation devised and proposed — be confuted and overthrown by one man's simple affirmation? If it is so, there is no argument so necessary and demonstrative that it cannot by that reason be most easily confuted and overthrown. But those arguments, because they belong to a later manuscript, how valid and invincible they are will then become plain when a comparison of that manuscript with Doctor Garissoles's book is instituted.

Latin

Quid reponit vir doctus? Primo, inquit, notetur respondentis confessio: Nam dum agnoscit peccatum illud, quod per unum hominem introiisse dicitur, esse unum unius hominis, nempe Adami peccatum, eadem ratione omnia illa argumenta confutat & convellit, quibus supra moliebatur alius confirmare, hic peccati nomine non ipsius Adami peccatum, sed nostram internam & originalem corruptionem tantum intelligendam esse. Ita-ne, omnia illa argumenta confutat & convellit? Possunt-ne unius simplici affirmatione, alterius argumenta & multa, & valida, & diu post illam affirmationem excogitata & proposita confutari & convelli? Si est ita, nullum est argumentum usque adeo necessarium, & demonstrativum, quod non possit ea ratione facillime confutari & convelli. Argumenta autem illa, quia sunt posterioris manuscripti, quam sint valida & invicta, tum fiet manifestum, cum instituetur manuscripti illius cum libro D. Gar. comparatio.

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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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