On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §681 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 10: third — sin is not imputed when there is no law; no law for Adam’s act

Click or tap any sentence to jump there. The side buttons skip a paragraph.

A third argument is supplied to me by what follows in the Apostle: sin is not imputed when there is no law.

But there is no law according to which Adam’s actual sin is imputed to us.

Therefore it is not imputed to us.

I prove the minor: for the major is the Apostle’s.

If there were any such law, it would be that singular one about not eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

But that for some thousands of years now is no more—that tree having been removed from the nature of things, or being wholly unknown to us and, like the other creatures of God, granted.

Therefore there is no law according to which Adam’s actual sin is imputed to us.

Latin

Tertium argumentum mihi suppeditant quae sequuntur apud Apostolum: peccatum non imputatur cum lex non est. Atqui lex non est secundum quam nobis imputetur peccatum actuale Adami. Ergo non imputatur nobis. Probo minorem: nam maior est Apostoli. Si qua eiusmodi lex esset, ea esset singularis illa de non edendo fructu arboris scientiae boni & mali. Atqui illa iam ab aliquot annorum millibus non est amplius, sublata e rerum natura illa arbore, aut nobis prorsus ignota, &, ut caeteras Dei creaturas, concessa. Ergo lex non est secundum quam nobis imputetur peccatum actuale Adami.

Report a mistake in this passage

About this text

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.

Printed text used

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.

Report a mistake