On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §80 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 8: Alien righteousness saves; alien guilt does not damn

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But if someone objects that the faithful are saved on account of a righteousness not their own but Christ's, and that therefore they can also be damned on account of an alien injustice, he truly does not see that very different things are being compared. For damnation is from justice, but salvation is from grace. For if salvation itself were also from justice, an alien righteousness could not save us; so neither can an alien guilt damn. Nothing, I think, could have been wanted more expressly.

Latin

Quod si excipiat quis, servari fideles propter justitiam non suam, sed Christi: itaque posse etiam damnari, propter alienam injustitiam, is vero non videt comparari valde diversa. Nam damnatio est a justitia, salus autem a gratia. Nam si esset etiam ipsa a justitia, non posset nos aliena justitia servare: quare ne aliena quidem culpa damnare. Nihil, opinor, desiderari potuit disertius.

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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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