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On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §242

Man. Post. Cap. IV: Quinta — Gen 5:5 וַיְחִי; judicium interlocutorium

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Add Scripture's witness. When Genesis 5:5 totals Adam's years, it is not content with the words it always uses alone in like reckonings; it inserts these two, וַיְחִי—surely neither for nothing nor by chance. I see no point for them except to hint that Adam, as the divine threat would have it, had not died but had lived—and that life could come only from God's grace and our Lord Jesus Christ's satisfaction.

The same follows from the paradise sentence: it was not definitive but, as it were, interlocutory—giving the man room to repent, deferring the last judgment until after death, and meanwhile setting his state somehow between the damned and the acquitted. Hence God did not call the man cursed as he did the serpent, but only the ground. And though the sentence bound him to bodily death, it spoke by circumlocution and would not name it "death," lest it look like executing the Law's threat. So that judgment was not the last (Adam must face that after death, per the Apostle: it is appointed for men to die once, and after that judgment—Heb. 9) but a preliminary to the last, deferred to another time. See the last of my Theses on Adam's fall.

Latin

His accedat Scripturae Testimonium: colligens enim summam annorum vitae Adami Gen. v. vers. 5. non contenta iis verbis, quibus in similibus computationibus solis usa est constantissime, interferuit haec duo, וַיְחִי, proculdubio nec frustra, nec temere: quo tamen pertineant non video, nisi ut innuatur, Adamum, ut ferebat divina comminatio, non fuisse mortuum, sed vixisse; quod aliunde quam a Dei gratia, & Domini nostri Jesu Christi satisfactione proficisci non potuit. Hoc ipsum etiam ex eo potest intelligi, quod sententia Adamo lata in paradiso non fuit definitiva, sed quasi interlocutoria, dans spatium homini ad resipiscendum, dilato post mortem extremo judicio, ac interim conditionem hominis definiens, mediam quodammodo inter damnatum & absolutum. Hinc factum est, ut, neque Deus hominem pronunciaverit maledictum, quemadmodum serpentem, sed terram duntaxat. Et quamvis morti corporeae eum addixerit sententia, tamen circumlocutione usus sit, nec mortem eam appellare voluerit, ne videretur pertinere ad Comminationis legis executionem. Fuit igitur judicium illud, non extremum (hoc enim Adamo post mortem subeundum fuit juxta illud Apostoli, statutum est hominibus ut semel moriantur, postea vero judicium Heb. 9.) sed praemissum extremo in aliud tempus dilato. Vide sis Thesium mearum de lapsu Adami ultimam.

About this text

New English, free to read. Open any section below.

English follows the locked 1661 Saumur Latin of Capita I–XIV partial through Man. Post. Caput IX (eph-ho / eph-ho pantes) before eph-ho / eph-ho pantes, reconstructed from IA PDF page images with Vision OCR and pdftotext as check. No modern English was copied. Cap. IX deepen+ remain.

Catalogue & scope

IA deimputationepri00lapl. Densify: Capita I–XII + Caput XIV + Man. Post. Cap. II–VI through Cap. X Rom. 5:14 tip. Not whole Disputatio; Cap. X Rom. 5:14+ / ~494 pp Disputatio remain.

Witnesses

This is an AI-assisted study translation. Source fidelity and completeness have not been independently certified. Open Latin on each section (or the Latin source witness link) for the source text. This is not a complete critical edition.