On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §85 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 8: Remote cause yes; deny inhering sin or drop immediate imputation

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Next I distinguish "on account of" as above. It marks either a remote cause or a proximate one. If the remote, the whole argument is granted; if the proximate, the premise is denied. For, as I have driven home many times, Adam's first actual sin is the cause of our inhering sin, and this is the cause of death; and what is the cause of a cause is also the cause of the effect. Either, with Pelagius, Pighius, and Socinus, drop immediate imputation or deny inhering sin

Latin

Deinde distinguo propter ut supra. Nam vel causam remotam designat, vel proximam. Si illam, conceditur totum argumentum; si hanc, negatur propositio. Est enim, ut multoties inculcavi, primum Adami peccatum actuale causa nostri peccati inhaerentis, & hoc causa mortis: quod autem est causa causae, id causa est etiam effectus. Aut cum Pelagio, Pighio, & Socino negandum est peccatum inhaerens ejusque reatus, aut impossibile est ex verbis Apostoli imputationem peccati Adae actualis antecedentem seu immediatam efficere.

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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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