PIERRE BAYLE AND THE REJECTION OF 'LA VOIE D'EXAMEN'

Abstract

In the last years of the seventeenth century when controversy arose within the Francophone Calvinist camp concerning evidence of the divine inspiration of Scripture, Pierre Bayle, in the article ‘Beaulieu’, Rem. F, in his Dictionnaire historique et critique, appeared in the unusual role of reconciler of the positions of three Protestant ministers in their arguments over the divine inspiration of the Christian faith.1 These were the late highly respected Louis Le Blanc de Beaulieu (died 1675), author of Theses Theologicae (Sedan 1675), including notably the De Auctoritate Scripturae (1652) Pars secunda; in qua docetur quid sit internum Spiritus sancti testimonium, per quod fideles certi fiunt de Scripturae Divinitate, xxxi–xxxv; Élie Saurin (1639–1703), author of a polemical Examen de la théologie de Monsr. Jurieu (La Haye 1694), and the prolific Pierre Jurieu (1639–1713), Bayle's former mentor and later denunciator, author of, among numerous other polemical works, the Défense...