On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §701 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 10: even if the ban lasts, nature’s covenant is prior to grace

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it is opposed that even if that law remained, it has nonetheless been abolished with respect to us, as the legal ceremonies, since it was a ceremonial law, whose violation cannot be imputed to us because we are not under that law—just as violation of the ceremonial laws cannot be imputed to us because we do not live under those laws.

Reply 1. Those who have been redeemed through Christ, and are sharers in that redemption, have indeed been freed, as from the ceremonial laws, so also from the rigor of this primitive law, and so the threats added to it do not look to them.

But still, as nature is prior to grace (since grace comes upon nature and reforms and restores it), and each one is conceived to be a human before he is a believer or a Christian: so also the status of nature, and the law or Natural covenant, is prior to the covenant of Grace, and so each one is considered first under the natural covenant, before under the gracious.

Therefore it ought not to have been supposed, but proved, that we are already not under that law.

Latin

GAR. Deinde opponitur, etiamsi lex illa permaneret, tamen abolitam esse respectu nostri, ut legales ceremonias, cum fuerit lex ceremonialis, cuius violatio non potest nobis imputari, quia non sumus sub ea lege; sicut violatio legum ceremonialium non potest nobis imputari, quia sub iis legibus non agimus. Resp. 1. Qui per Christum redempti sunt, & redemptionis illius participes, ii sane, ut a legibus ceremonialibus, ita etiam ab huius legis primitivae rigore liberati sunt, adeoque ad eos non spectant comminationes illi additae. Sed tamen, ut natura prior est gratiae (cum gratia naturae superveniat, eamque reformet & instaurat), & unusquisque concipitur prius esse homo, quam sit fidelis aut Christianus: Ita etiam status naturae, & lex sive foedus Naturale prius est foedere Gratiae, adeoque unusquisque consideratur prius sub foedere naturali, quam sub gratuito. Quare non debuit supponi, sed probari nos iam non esse sub ea lege.

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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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