On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §568 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 9: If we sinned in paradise, we existed then

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But besides I ask. When did we sin in Adam by his actual sin? when he sinned it, or at another time? without doubt when he committed it in paradise: you can assign no other time. Hear what follows from that. Those who have so sinned that they have merited for themselves the just condemnation of eternal death, those have truly and properly sinned. But those who have truly and properly sinned, those then when they sinned were truly and properly. Therefore he who today begins to be and is born an infant, he truly and properly speaking already then was, when Adam was in paradise, some thousands of years before: inasmuch as he then truly and properly sinned. And so what Christ said of himself, John 8. 58. Before Abraham was born I am, there will be none of us who cannot say the same of himself.

Latin

Sed praeterea quaero. Quando peccavimus in Adamo eius peccato actuali? an cum illud peccavit, an alio tempore? haud dubie cum illud commisit in paradiso: nullum aliud tempus assignare potes. Audi quid inde sequatur. Qui peccarunt ita ut iustam condemnationem mortis aeternae sibi commeriti sint, illi vere & proprie peccarunt. Qui autem vere & proprie peccarunt, illi tunc cum peccaverunt vere & proprie fuerunt. Qui ergo hodie incipit esse & nascitur infans, ille vere & proprie loquendo fuit iam tum, cum Adamus esset in paradiso, ante aliquot annorum millia: quippe qui tum vere & proprie peccavit. Itaque quod de se dixit Christus Ioh. 8. 58. Antequam Abraham nasceretur ego sum, nemo fuerit nostrum, qui idem dicere de semetipso non possit.

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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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