On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §677 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 10: after the law innate vice flared; Adam-act imputation stayed hidden

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When the law was given, innate vice showed itself far more clearly than before, and overflowed with a wealth of the worst fruits.

But the imputation of the first actual sin stayed as hidden as before, declared by no precept of the law, by no threat, by no sentence.

Indeed that imputation cannot stand with the Mosaic law, as, God favoring, I will make plain in its place.

In vain, therefore, would the Apostle have used that circumscription of time, until the law, if the question had been about that sort of one man’s actual sin imputed to all.

Latin

Lata lege vitium innatum sese multo quam antea clarius prodidit, ac pessimorum fructuum copia redundavit. Sed imputatio primi peccati actualis tam latuit quam antea, nullo legis praecepto, nulla comminatione, nulla sententia declarata. Immo illa imputatio cum lege Mosaica stare non potest, ut, Deo bene favente, suo loco planum faciam. Frustra igitur Apostolus illam temporis circumscriptionem adhibuisset usque ad legem, si de eiusmodi peccato actuali unius hominis omnibus imputato quaestio fuisset.

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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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