On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §90 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 8: Through another only imputatively — or deny propagation

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Next, he says, from the words "through Adam's disobedience we are constituted sinners." For we cannot be constituted sinners through another's actual disobedience except imputatively: what belongs to another personally cannot become ours, nor can we be named from it, without imputation intervening. But through Adam's actual disobedience we are constituted sinners. Therefore imputatively. What is denying the propagation of inhering sin, if this is not?

Latin

Deinde, inquit, ex verbis per inobedientiam Adae peccatores constituimur. Nam per actualem alterius inobedientiam constitui non possumus peccatores, nisi imputative; quia quod alterius est personaliter, nostrum fieri nequit, neque nos inde denominari, nisi imputationis interventu. Atqui per actualem Adami inobedientiam constituimur peccatores. Ergo imputative. Quid est negare propagationem peccati inhaerentis, si hoc non est?

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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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