On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §703 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 10: Adam was under a positive paradise ban, not nature’s law

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Yes—Adam indeed was under that law by nature? No: he was not naturally in paradise, nor was that law given naturally, but supernaturally through the word of God.

We are indeed under the law of nature, which both in habit and in act we too much, alas, violate.

But who does not see that that ceremonial and positive law, given by the word of God, fencing the freedom of free choice about a thing by its own nature morally neither good nor evil, and fitting a man not insofar as he was a human being or an inhabitant of the world, but only insofar as he was an inhabitant of paradise, was?

Did the learned man think we are naturally in the earthly paradise? that it is lawful for us to eat of the other trees of paradise?

Latin

Imo Adamus quidem fuit sub illa lege. Non fuit enim naturaliter in paradiso, nec lex illa naturaliter lata est, sed supernaturaliter per verbum Dei. Sumus quidem sub lege naturae, quam & habitu, & actu, nimis, proh dolor, violamus. Sed quis non videt legem illam ceremonialem, & positivam, verbo Dei latam, liberi arbitrii libertatem circa rem natura sua moraliter nec bonam nec malam circumscribentem, hominique non quatenus homo fuit, aut mundi incola, sed tantum quatenus incola fuit paradisi, convenientem, non fuisse legem naturae? Putavitne Vir doctus nos naturaliter esse in paradiso terrestri? licere nobis vesci alijs arboribus paradisi?

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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.

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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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