Beausobre, Isaac De

Beausobre, Isaac De born at Niort, March 8th, 1653, of an ancient family, originally of Limousin. His parents were Protestants, and educated him at Saumur. In 1683 he was ordained minister at Chatillon-sur-Indre, in Touraine. The French government caused his church to be sealed up, and Beausobre was bold enough to break the seal, for which he was compelled to flee, and at Rotterdam he became chaplain to the Princess of Anhalt. In 1693 he published his Defence of the Doctrine of the Reformers (Defense de la doct. des Reform. sur la Providence, etc.), in which he treats the Lutherans with some severity, and defends the Synod of Dort. In 1694 he went to Berlin, where he received many appointments, and was charged, together with L'Enfant, with the work of translating the N.T. The new version, with ample prefaces and notes, appeared at Amsterdam in 1718 (2 vols. 4to), and again in 1741, with emendations. The Epistles of St. Paul were the only part of the work which fell to the share of Beausobre. The notes are tinged with Socinianism. He labored during a large portion of his life at a History of the Reformation, from the Council of Basle to the period of the publication of the Confession of Augsburg, and it was this undertaking which drew from him his Critical History of Manichaeism (Histoire Critique du Manicheisme, Amst. 1734-39, 2 vols. 4to), of which vol. 2 was posthumous. The work is written with vast ability, and shows that many of those who are charged with Manichaeism in the Middle Ages by the Papists are falsely charged. The Protestant congregations of Utrecht, Hamburg, and the Savoy, at London, endeavored to induce Beausobre to become their pastor, but the King of Prussia valued him too highly to permit him to leave Berlin. His Sermons on the Resurrection of Lazarus were translated by Cotes (Lond. 1822, 8vo). He died June 6th, 1738. He left, besides the works above mentioned, Remarques critiques et philologiques sur le N.T. (Hague 1742, 2 vols. 4to): — Histoire critique du Culte des Morts parmi les Chretiens et les Paiens: — A Supplement to L'Enfant's History of the Hussites (Lausanne, 1745, 4to): — A History of the Reformation, from 1517 to 1630 (Berlin, 1785, 4 vols. 8vo). Landon, Eccl. Dict. 2, 110; Haag, La France Protestante, 2, 123-127.