On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §624 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 9: The target is immediate imputation, which the opponent calls common

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And a little later he says: "But with human nature existing in that principal individual, men can also be said to have existed commonly in him." Existed, that is, distant and separate from Adam's person? I do not think anyone will say that. And Cap. 2 §17: "That common or immediate imputation," he says, "just as it was later than Adam's first actual transgression, so it was prior to the personal existence of each man born of Adam, and so also to that corruption which descends into individuals by natural generation, insofar as from the beginning all flowed commonly in Adam."

Latin

Et paulo post inquit: Existente autem humana natura in individuo illo principiali, in illo etiam dici possunt homines communiter extitisse. Extiteruntne scilicet a persona Adami distantes & separati? Non arbitror quenquam hoc dicturum. Et Cap. 2. §. xvii. Communis, inquit, illa sive immediata, quemadmodum posterior fuit prima actuali Adami transgressione, ita prior fuit personali cuiuscumque hominis ex Adamo prognati existentia atque adeo etiam corruptione illa quae in singulos naturali generatione descendit, quatenus ab initio resuerunt omnes communiter in Adamo.

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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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