On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §94 · Josué de la Place (Placeus)

Chapter 9: Garissoles Levi – Abraham parallel; concede without immediate imputation

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II. But what does D. Garissoles gather from Levi's being tithed? "As," he says, "Abraham was the originative principle of the Levitical nation, which was propagated from him according to seminal relation, so also Adam is the material principle of the whole human race as far as natural generation is concerned. Therefore if the Apostle rightly said that the Levitical priests were tithed in Abraham because they were in his loins when Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek, the priest of God, nothing strange or unusual ought to seem in the saying that all humans sinned in Adam and in him were ruined and damned, insofar as all were in the loins of him while he was sinning." What forbids me to grant this whole comparison, while still denying the immediate imputation of Adam's first actual sin?

Latin

II. Sed quid ex decimatione Levi colligit D. Garissolius? Sicut, inquit, Abrahamus originarium fuit principium Gentis Leviticae, quae secundum rationem seminalem ab eo propagata est, ita & Adam principium est materiale totius generis humani, quod ad generationem naturalem attinet. Itaque si recte dictum est ab Apostolo Leviticos sacerdotes decimatos fuisse in Abrahamo, quia in ejus lumbis erant, quando scilicet Abrahamus Dei sacerdoti Melchisedeco decimas persolvit; nihil mirum videri debet, aut inusitatum, quod dicuntur omnes homines peccasse in Adamo, & in eo perditi ac damnati fuisse, quatenus omnes in ejus peccantis lumbis fuerunt. Quid vetat me hoc totum concedere, negantem imputationem primi Adae peccati actualis immediatam?

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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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