On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §634 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 9: die actu ⇒ sinned actu; not Adam's act but original vitium inherent in each

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From which I argue thus: Men die by act. Therefore they have sinned by act. For it is absurd that one who has sinned only in potency, not in act, should be punished in act—and with a most heavy penalty. And yet they did not sin by act in Adam when he sinned actually. There must therefore be another sin because of which men die by act: namely that original vice which is in all and each truly and properly, by act, inherently—as certainly by act as it was in Adam himself.

Latin

Unde sic argumentor: Moriuntur homines actu. Ergo peccaverunt actu. Absurdum enim est ut qui potentia tantum peccavit, non autem actu, puniatur actu, & quidem poena gravissima. Atqui non peccaverunt actu in Adamo cum peccavit actualiter. Aliud igitur sit oportet peccatum ob quod actu moriantur homines, nempe vitium illud originale, quo quod omnibus & singulis inest vere & proprie, actu, inhaerenter; tam certe actu quam fuit in ipso 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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