On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §670 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 10 — .3: distinguish Christ’s act from fruit; Adam’s act from reatus

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ut the objection will easily be solved on both sides if we use a distinction.

For in Christ’s obedience the act is to be distinguished from the fruit, and existence from imputation.

For although that actual obedience no longer is, as to act and existence, yet it endures, and will persevere to the end of the age, as to imputation and fruit, insofar as by his obedience many are constituted righteous (Rom. 5:19).

So in that first sin of Adam it is fair to distinguish the act from the guilt: that we may say the act indeed did not last until the law, since it passed in a moment, but that the guilt will persevere to the end of the world, seeing that it descends upon each of Adam’s natural posterity.

For guilt came from one upon all unto condemnation (Rom. 5:16).

Latin

GAR. 3. Sed objectio facile utrinque solvetur si distinctione utamur. Nam in obedientia quidem Christi distinguendus est actus a fructu, & existentia ab imputatione. Etsi enim obedientia illa actualis non est amplius ratione actus & existentiae, perdurat tamen, & perseverabit usque ad finem seculi ratione imputationis & fructus, quatenus eius obedientia iusti constituuntur multi. Rom. v. 19. Sic in Adami peccato illo primo distingui par est actum a reatu: ut dicamus, actum quidem non durasse usque ad legem, cum momento transierit, sed reatum perseveraturum usque ad mundi finem, quippe cum descendat in unumquemque naturalium Adae posterorum: Reatus enim ex uno venit in omnes in condemnationem, Rom. v. 16.

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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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