Placaeus: fallen man is free from three necessities but has lost the power not to sin
This agrees with what Josué de la Place teaches in his treatise on man's free choice, chapter 4, which deals with man's free choice in the state of sin. 'In Adam's descendants,' he says, 'there is a faculty of judging and willing that is free from a threefold necessity: from compulsion, such as our body can suffer; from determination by matter, chiefly as seen in stones and logs; and from sense, as belongs to brute animals. Because of this faculty man is a subject capable of either vice or virtue, and answerable to God's law.'
He then adds: 'What freedom of choice, then, did Adam lose? He lost the absolute power of not sinning that lay in original righteousness. This lay partly in the natural integrity of the moral faculties, their perfection and rectitude, free of any vice, disease, disorder or error; partly in the desire for the true last end and in the habits of good living that sprang from that desire, which by the order of nature would have grown little by little to the highest degree of perfection.
In place of this freedom came the bondage of sin, which lies in the corruption and crookedness of the moral faculties, especially the will. That corruption consists in turning away from the true last end and turning toward a last end that only falsely appears to be one.
Since whatever is desired is either the last end or a means to it, it follows that nothing sound is left in our moral faculties. And more than that: as long as we are in that condition, we cannot help sinning.'
Latin
XXV. Quibus consentanea sunt quae docet Josue Placeus tractatu de libero hominis arbitrio capite quarto, quod est de Libero Hominis arbitrio in statu peccati. Est, inquit, in posteris Adami facultas arbitrandi & volendi libera a triplici necessitate coactionis, scilicet, qualem pati potest corpus nostrum, determinationis a materia, maxime qualis cernitur in lapidibus & stipitibus, & sensus qualis competit brutis animantibus, cujus ratione homo est subjectum δεκτικὸν vel vitii, vel virtutis, ac Dei legi obnoxius. Quibus postea subjungit, Quam igitur arbitrii libertatem amisit Adamus? Amisit facultatem absolutam non peccandi sitam in justitia originali, quae posita est partim in naturali facultatum moralium integritate, perfectione, rectitudine absque ullo vitio, morbo, ἀταξίᾳ, errore, partim in appetitu veri finis ultimi, & ex illo appetitu enatis habitibus bene vivendi inchoatis, qui secundum naturae ordinem paulatim crevissent ad summum usque perfectionis gradum. In hujus libertatis locum successit servitus peccati sita in depravatione atque obliquitate facultatum moralium, praesertim voluntatis: ea vero depravatio consistit in aversione a vero fine ultimo, & conversione ad finem ultimum falso apparentem. Ex quo sequitur, cum quicquid appetitur sit aut finis ultimus, aut medium ad illud, nihil sani reliquum esse factum in facultatibus nostris moralibus. Neque id solum, sed quamdiu sic affecti sumus, fieri non posse quin peccemus.