On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §635 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 9: 'Adam sinned for all posterity': true as great harm; false as loco nostro

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Still less do I grasp what you add: when Adam sinned, he sinned for all his posterity. If you mean he sinned to the great harm of all his posterity, nothing is truer. For from that was born the vice that invaded the human race and devoted it to death. But if you mean he sinned in our place, nothing less carefully considered could have been said by you.

Latin

Minus etiam capio quae subnectis, cum Adamus peccavit, pro omnibus suis posteris peccavit. Si intelligis eum magno omnium posterorum malo peccasse, nihil verius. Hinc enim natum est vitium illud quod genus humanum invasit & morti addixit. Sed si intelligis eum loco nostro peccavisse, nihil dici potuit a te minus considerate.

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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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