On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §706 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 10 — if Mosaic shadows are types, so are paradise and the trees

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the learned man taking so much pains to prove that the law about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—which was nowhere else than in the earthly paradise, and for some thousands of years now has ceased to be in the nature of things—has not been antiquated.

But he observes a difference between this first ceremonial law and the Mosaic ceremonies which is none, and ought to avail to confirm rather than to overturn my argument.

For if the legal ceremonies were types shadowing the things revealed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the same is to be concluded about that ancient ceremony.

For were not Adam, and Eve, and the earthly paradise, and the tree of life which was in its midst, shadows whose truth and body is in Christ, or at least pertains to his doctrine?

What is there, then, why the same should not be held about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?

Latin

PLAC. Misere me Viri docti tantum operae sumentis, ut probet legem de arbore scientiae boni & mali, quae nusquam alibi fuit quam in paradiso terrestri, & iam ab aliquot annorum millibus esse desiit in rerum natura, non esse antiquatam. Observat autem discrimen inter hanc primam legem ceremonialem, & Mosaicas ceremonias, quod nullum est, & ad confirmandum potius quam evertendum argumentum meum valere debet. Nam si ceremoniae legales erant typi adumbrantes ea quae Iesu Christi Evangelio revelata sunt, idem de ceremonia illa antiqua conficiendum est. Nonne enim & Adamus, & Eva, & paradisus terrestris, & arbor vitae, quae in eius erat medio, umbrae fuerunt quarum veritas & corpus est in Christo, aut saltem ad eius doctrinam pertinet? Quid est igitur, cur non idem sentiatur de arbore scientiae boni & mali?

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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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