FathersVia Patrum

On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin · §7

Cap. III opens: first and second necessary arguments (not proposed; misreported)

Click or tap any sentence to jump there. The side buttons skip a paragraph.

Chapter Three. The same is proved by necessary arguments.

I judged the arguments just given highly probable; what follows is necessary.

First: a Synod cannot condemn Placeus’s view if that view was never proposed or laid out before it. The National Synod that issued the Decree never laid it out. Who would have laid it out, if not the accuser? Should anyone have accused it before the Synod, the accuser would have been Garissolius, the Synod’s president. Yet how could he then have presented the view as it actually is, when even four years afterward he still could not propose it as it is? In his explanation and defense of the Synodical Decree he ascribes to Placeus a view Placeus does not hold — one that openly conflicts with the words in which Placeus had already set out his mind, both in letters to Garissolius and in the manuscript Garissolius later chose to label the later one. I will make this clearer than noon when we reach that place.

Add a second argument from the Synod’s own testimony about what was reported to it: that certain writings had appeared, some in print and some in manuscript, which confine the whole account of original sin to hereditary corruption alone inhering in every human being, and which deny the imputation of Adam’s first sin. Those words either fail to present Placeus’s view or present it badly. He never simply denied the imputation of Adam’s first sin, nor did he wish it denied; he denied only one kind of that imputation. Because he affirms one imputation of that first sin and denies another, his view is not presented when people say, without distinction, that he denies the imputation of Adam’s first sin.

Latin

CAPUT III. Idem probatur argumentis necessariis. Superiora argumenta, ut ego arbitror, valde probabilia fuerunt; sequuntur necessaria. Primum enim qui damnari sententia Placei in ea Synodo potuit, in qua non est proposita vel exposita? Atqui non est in illa Synodo nationali exposita quae fecit illud decretum. A quo enim fuisset exposita, nisi ab eo, a quo fuisset accusata? Si quis autem eam accusavit apud Synodum, is fuit D. Garissolius Synodi illius praeses. Is autem quomodo eam uti est exponere tunc potuisset, qui, ne quidem quadriennio post, eam qualis est proponere potuit? Certe in sua Decreti Synodici explicatione et defensione is Placeo sententiam tribuit, quam Placeus non agnoscit, quaeque cum illis verbis aperte pugnat quibus mentem suam Placeus exposuerat cum datis ad eum literis, tum in eo manuscripto quod ei posterius appellare placuit, ut suo loco faciam sole meridiano clarius. Ad hoc argumentum aliud accedat ex eo ductum quod ad se relatum fuisse Synodus ipsa testatur. Cum relatum, inquit, fuisset ad Synodum scripta quaedam, alia typis evulgata, alia manu exarata prodiisse, quae totam rationem peccati originalis sola corruptione hereditaria in omnibus hominibus inhaerente definiunt, et primi peccati Adae imputationem negant. Illis enim verbis aut exposita non est Placei sententia, aut male exposita est. Is enim primi peccati Adae imputationem nunquam simpliciter negavit, nunquam negatam voluit. Negavit tantum certam quandam peccati illius imputationem. Cum igitur imputationem primi illius peccati quandam affirmet, quandam neget, non exponitur eius sententia, si dicitur simpliciter et nulla distinctione adhibita primi peccati Adae imputationem negare.

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.