On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §83 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 8: First and proximate causes — inhering corruption reigns

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So Adam's fall is the first cause of death's reign, but the proximate cause is the sin produced from it and inhering in all; and because that sin reigns, death also reigns. Certainly the sin in human beings not only is, but lives; not only lives but reigns — the sin they serve, the sin they obey, whose law is in their members. That is not Adam's actual sin, but its effect: corruption that remains.

Latin

Est igitur lapsus Adae prima causa regni mortis, sed proxima est ab illo productum peccatum omnibus inhaerens, quod quia regnat, etiam mors regnat. Certe peccatum quod in hominibus non modo est, sed vivit; non modo vivit sed regnat; cui serviunt, cui obediunt, cujus lex est in membris. Id non est peccatum actuale Adami, sed hujus effectum, corruptio inhaerens.

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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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