Matthieu Cottière

Matthieu Cottière (Cotterius) (1581–1656)^[1][2] was a French Reformed pastor at Tours and theological writer.^[3]

Life

His parents were Simon Cottière or Couttière and Françoise Ribbe. He studied theology at Geneva to 1604, presenting a dissertation on justification. He then moved on to the University of Leiden, and took part in the series of debates on predestination and justification between Arminius and Gomarus.^[1][2][4]

Cottière became a pastor at Pringé in 1607. He was minister at Tours from 1617 to 1656.^[1] He was a Huguenot deputy at the national synod of Alais in 1620, where he defended the orthodoxy of the Albigensians,^[5] and at Charenton in 1631.^[6] He married Marguerite (or Marie) Amirault in 1624.^[7] They had eight children.^[2] A son Isaac also went into the church.^[6]

Works

Cottière was a millennialist,^[8] who believed that the millennium had begun in the year 1517.^[9] He was a follower of John Napier,^[10] and an influence on Johann Heinrich Alsted.^[3] The Synopsis criticorum of Matthew Poole called him "vir doctus et acutus".^[11]

• Apocalypseos Domini Nostri Jesu Christi (1615).^[12] There was a letter of dedication to James I of England.^[13]
• Traittez des originales et versions (1619), against the Bible translation of Pierre Coton.^[14]
• Paradoxe, que l'Église romaine, en ce qu'elle a de différent des Églises dites réformées, n'est ancienne que de quatre cents ans environ (1636)^[15]
• Les propheties, touchant l'estat de la religion et de l'eglise des derniers temps (1637)^[16]
• L'Apocalypse, de nostre seigneur Jesus Christ (1642)^[17] This is a French translation of the 1615 Latin work.^[1] Included (subtitle) was a commentary on a 1641 work on the Apocalypse by the Jesuit Bernardin de Montreuil.
• Esclaircissement sur une principale controverse (1642)^[18]
• Les degrez de consanguinité et d'affinité (1644)^[19]
• De Hellenistis et lingua Hellenistica (1646).^[20] Opposed Daniel Heinsius, in the controversy he had with Salmasius over the nature of New Testament Greek.^[21]

A 1648 work Epistola ad Spanheimum, in the controversy over universal grace and Amyraldism,^[22] was answered by Friedrich Spanheim in Epistola ad Cottierum (1648).^[6][23]