On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §695 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 10: tree gone, but the ban’s punishing force still reaches posterity (cross parallel)

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he argumentation that that law for some thousands of years now is no more, etc., the reply is: neither does the Tree still stand, nor therefore does that law endure insofar as it regarded the prohibition of that forbidden fruit; yet the force of the law still perseveres insofar as it threatened punishment for that disobedience of Adam which was to lie not on Adam only, but also to flow out upon all posterity.

Just as Christ too was taken on the tree of the Cross, and there bore the curse, by the force and prescription of that law constituted by God, Cursed is he who hangs on a tree, as Paul teaches in Galatians 3:13.

The Cross has been taken away, and that law does not endure; and yet the merit of the obedience which Christ rendered on that cursed Cross flows to us by free imputation, and will flow to the end of the world.

Latin

GAR. Ad argumentationem, lex illa iam ab aliquot annorum millibus non est amplius &c. Resp. Nec Arborem exstare amplius, neque adeo legem illam perdurare, quatenus respiciebat prohibitionem fructus illius vetiti; sed vim tamen legis perseverare, quatenus inobedientiae illi Adami punitionem interminabatur quae non Adamo tantum incubitura, verum etiam in omnes posteros dimanatura esset. Sicut etiam Christus in arbore Crucis direptus est, & ibi maledictionem pertulit, ex vi & praescripto legis illius a Deo constitutae, Maledictus qui pendet in ligno, ut docet Paulus Galat. iii. 13. Sublata est Crux, & lex illa non perdurat; & tamen obedientiae, quam Christus in maledicta illa Cruce praestitit, meritum ad nos imputatione gratuita dimanat, & ad mundi finem dimanaturum est.

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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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