Peyrere, Isaac

Peyrere, Isaac a French Protestant writer, was born at Bordeaux in 1592. He fitted himself for military and diplomatic service, and at one time served the prince of Conde, whom he pleased by the singularity of his humor. PeyrBre finally turned pious. He was at the time a Protestant. He claimed that it had been revealed to him by St. Paul that Adam was not the first man created, and he undertook to prove his theory by publishing in Holland, in 1655, a book entitled Prceadamitce, sive exercitatio super versibus 12, 13, 14, capitis xv Epistolae Pauli ad Romanos, which work was consigned to the flames, and he himself imprisoned at Brussels. Upon recantation and the interference of the prince of Condd he was released, and went to Rome in 1655, where he published the reasons for his recantation, and abjured Calvinism and Praeadamitism before pope Alexander VII. He was not believed sincere by the people, and doubtless public opinion was just. The pontiff endeavored to detain him at Rome, but he finally returned to Paris, and again entered the service of the prince of Condd, acting as his librarian. He was not thought to be attached to any particular Church, notwithstanding that he had joined the Romanists. He, however, submitted to receive the sacrament. Some time after his return to Paris he retired to the "Seminaire des Vertus," where he died in 1676. He wrote, besides the abovementioned articles, works upon Greenland and Iceland; also one upon the Restoration of the Jews, etc.