Cap. VII tip: Garissoles book — prior/posterior manuscripts; digression; Rom. 5 only proves consequent

Chapter Seven. If the Arguments of D. Garissoles prove any imputation of Adam's first sin, that it is only mediate or consequent.

I. So stood the arguments of D. Maresius. There was published at Montauban in the year 1648 An Explanation and Defense of the Synodical Decree of Charenton On the Imputation of Adam's first sin, by Antoine Garissoles, minister of the Word of God in the Church and Academy of Montauban, and Professor of Sacred Theology; dedicated to the most ample Presidents and supreme Scholarchs of the Churches and Academies of Zurich, Bern, Basel, and Schaffhausen, among whom he scattered many things about certain persons whom he does not name, and complains of things which, if I understand anything, rather ought to have been silenced for the sake of truth and peace, and of his own honor. Those who were so publicly accused before such great men would by no means have failed themselves, unless they had preferred to consult the peace and tranquility of the Church rather than their own reputation. But because (which grieves me exceedingly) that great man was snatched from the Church by an early death, I desire that his memory be spared as far as I can.

II. The dedicatory Epistle therefore set aside, he nearly in the whole book studied to refute two certain manuscripts, and Placeus's theses. Of those Manuscripts he calls one prior, the other posterior, I believe because one was written before the National Synod, the other after. The prior, a few months before the National Synod, its author, asked by a pastor friend old enough, had poured out as it were on the spot, and had sent his autograph to him, because the courier was pressing, with no copy retained, nor shared with any colleague or friend, nor afterward seen by himself in any way. And so if any copies of it have been scattered, that must have been done either by him to whom it had been sent, or by D. Garissoles himself, with whom that man had shared it. That manuscript certainly neither its own author has, nor Placeus, and who has any copy of it now wholly escapes me. And so I cannot in any way compare it with D. Garissoles's refutation.

As to the later manuscript, it was written by Placeus with a hastening pen at the beginning of the year 1647, and is nothing but a reply to another manuscript opposed to his own Theses, composed by a certain friend venerable to him for age and doctrine and office, and sent to him that he might reply quickly if he did not rest in it. Placeus obeyed him, and replied. That reply came to D. Garissoles's hands. He thought that that manuscript and private writing, together with that prior manuscript, ought to be refuted by him publicly, in a book printed, and before the Reverend Swiss, who perhaps had not received even by hearsay anything about it: which, if he had published together with his refutation, and had set it before those most ample men to be read, it would have been most easy for them to pass judgment on this whole cause. But it pleased the learned man to keep his Adversary (if yet he is to be called Adversary who desired to offend him not even by a word) shut within private walls, and as it were to restrain him by a dock put in, while outdoors, with all hearing, before most illustrious men, he accused him most heavily, and disputed that whole cause against him.

And he so cites those two manuscripts as if they had been written by the same author, when yet he was not unaware that Placeus was author of the later only; which he also hints not obscurely in one or two places. And when this later manuscript had been distributed into fourteen chapters, he scatters particles extracted from it almost everywhere, with the chapter never marked, so that you do not know from which manuscript, or chapter of the manuscript, that which he cites and refutes has been excerpted: which matter gave me very much trouble when comparing the later manuscript (for that prior one, as I said, I neither have, nor know whence I could have it) with its refutation.

But since in that manuscript Placeus had first constituted the state of the question very accurately, then had dissolved his arguments for the immediate imputation of Adam's sin with whom he was disputing, drawn from Scripture, from reason, from the testimonies of the Fathers and of the Reformers, and had sprinkled his own reply with various reasons against that imputation as occasion offered, D. Garissoles vehemently harassed that constitution and exposition of the state of the question, and when that was neglected attributed to Placeus a judgment which he does not own, and so opposed it with arguments that he everywhere inserted some replies or reasons of Placeus and studied to refute them. But how much force those arguments have to which Placeus was replying can be known from nowhere better than from that later manuscript, in which they have been carefully and with greatest faithfulness recalled to the examination of reason. But D. Garissoles's arguments are either the same as those, or, if they differ from them somehow in words and in the manner of proposing, yet the weight is nearly the same, so that they can scarcely be exempted from a comparison and contention of that Manuscript with D. Garissoles's book. I will nevertheless exempt them as far as I can, and will set them before my reader in this place, that he may see that they help antecedent imputation nothing.

He therefore, having constituted the state of the question not as Placeus wished, but as he himself wished against Placeus's words and mind, without any distinction of imputation, since he understood well enough that antecedent or immediate imputation can in no way be proved by itself, at once digressed through four whole chapters, 4, 5, 6, and 7, to prove in general that the imputation of another's sin is not unjust. Which first is not so much to argue as to answer an Argument by which the antecedent imputation of Adam's first sin is attacked, drawn from this, that it seems to fight with justice. Next he proves what Placeus does not deny. For he who acknowledges a mediate or consequent imputation of another's sin certainly confesses that some imputation of another's sin is not unjust. Therefore that was not to be proved in general concerning the imputation of another's sin; for it is clear that there can be both a just and an unjust one; but in species concerning such an imputation as the antecedent or immediate imputation of Adam's sin is posited to be. Which is indeed altogether impossible to prove. But whatever it be — for now I do not wish to digress with the learned man — this is no consequence: Some imputation of another's sin is not unjust; Therefore Adam's first actual sin is imputed to all his posterity, and that by an imputation preceding hereditary corruption. For from that antecedent there does not follow such an imputation of such a sin, namely Adam's first actual sin, namely an antecedent one, any more than any imputation whatever of any other alien sin, whether of Adam himself or of other Patriarchs.

That digression therefore dismissed, in chapter 8 he brings forth certain Arguments from chapter 5 of the Epistle to the Romans, verses 12 and following. But those arguments prove only an imputation which follows hereditary corruption. First he himself confesses it, chapter 8, section 3, page 206, and elsewhere, as has been observed by us above in chapter 4, page 21, and in the last chapter, page 35.

Next, since they are drawn from the comparison which the Apostle institutes between Christ and Adam, one reply could be set against them all, namely that the likeness is in the thing only, not in the mode of the thing. Which reply Placeus did not learn from Socinus, but from the Apostle, Romans 5:15–16, from Calvin's Commentary on Romans 5:17, and, to omit others, from the most distinguished theologian Andreas Rivetus, whose words these are in the Catholic Orthodox, Tractate IV, Question 2, section 18: There is nothing in this argument, however, that forces us to acknowledge a necessity of inhering qualities. For this only can be proved, that we have righteousness in Christ, just as injustice in Adam. But it will be a comparison of causes, not of the mode by which the thing is communicated to us. For Adam's sin is communicated to us by generation, but Christ's righteousness by imputation.