PREACHING FRIARS. See DOMINICANS.
Supposed inhabitants of the earth anterior Adam. The term is ap plied particularly to a theory advanced by Isaac de la Peyrere (better known by his Latinized name Pererius), which be attempted to prove from the Bible. Peyrere was born of a Calvinist family of Bordeaux in 1594, and was attached to the service of the Prince of Condo. His theory was first made public in Paris in 1655, in the form of a commentary on Romans v. 12-14 en title() Pra'adanziter. The same year be published the first part of a formal treatise on the pre Adamite hypothesis. and the theological conse quences to be derived therefrom, entitled Systeme( Theologiemn e.r Prceadamitarum Hypothesi. Ac cording to his hypothesis Adam was the progen itor of the Jewish race only, and it is only of him and his race that the Bible is designed to supply the history. Other races existed on earth before that of Adam; but of them the Bible con tains no record, nor did the :Mosaic law regard them or impose any obligation upon them. It was only under the gospel that they began to be comprehended in the law, which through Christ was given to all the human races of the earth: and it is in this sense that sin is said (Rom. v.
13) to "have been in the world until the law," but not to have been "imputed when the law was not." For the pre-Adamite race, as the law was not, there was no legal offense. The only evil which Peyrere recognized was natural evil. The same limited interpretation he extended to most other details of the Mosaic history. Thus he regarded the deluge as partial. being confined only to the Adamite race. Other miraculous narratives of the Pentateuch and even of other books he restricted similarly.
As his book was published in the Low Coun tries, he fell under the animadversion of the In quisition, and eventually was arrested in the diocese of Mechlin, but was released at the in stance of the Prince de Conde. He afterwards went to Rome, where he conformed to the Roman Catholic Church, and made a full retraction of his erroneous opinions (Epistola ad Philoti. In um, Rome. 1657). He was offered preferment by the Pope, Alexander VII.. but returned in preference to Paris, where lie entered the Semi nary of Notre Dame des Vertus, in which he resided till his death in 1676. For a modern dis cussion of this theme, consult Winchell, Pre adamites (Boston, 1880).