1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/La Place, Josué de

LA PLACE (Lat. Placaeus), JOSUÉ DE (1606?–1665), French Protestant divine, was born in Brittany. He studied and afterwards taught philosophy at Saumur. In 1625 he became pastor of the Reformed Church at Nantes, and in 1632 was appointed professor of theology at Saumur, where he had as his colleagues, appointed at the same time, Moses Amyraut and Louis Cappell. In 1640 he published a work, Theses theologicae de statu hominis lapsi ante gratiam, which was looked upon with some suspicion as containing liberal ideas about the doctrine of original sin. The view that the original sin of Adam was not imputed to his descendants was condemned at the synod of Charenton (1645), without special reference being made to La Place, whose position perhaps was not quite clear. As a matter of fact La Place distinguished between a direct and indirect imputation, and after his death his views, as well as those of Amyraut, were rejected in the Formula consensus of 1675. He died on the 17th of August 1665.

La Place’s defence was published with the title Disputationes academicae (3 vols., 1649–1651; and again in 1665); his work De imputatione primi peccati Adami in 1655. A collected edition of his works appeared at Franeker in 1699, and at Aubencit in 1702.