Terrasson, Gaspard

, brother of the two preceding, was born October 5, 1680, at Lyons. At the age of eighteen, he was sent by his fatherto the house of the oratory at Paris, where he immediately devoted himself to the study of scripture and the fathers, and taught afterwards in different houses of his order, chiefly at Troyes, where he spoke a funeral oration for the dauphin, son of Louis XIV. in the | Franciscan church. Notwithstanding the success which attended this first essay of his talents for the pulpit, he did not cui.tinue to preach, but only delivered exhortations in the seminaries. But after his brother’s death, being solicited to supply several j ulpits where the deceased had engaged himself, he soon acquired a degree of reputation superior to that which AnJrew Terrassoit had enjoyed. He preached at Paris during five years, and, among other occasions, a who;e Lt nt in the metropolitan church, to a very numerous congregation. Various circumstances, particularly his attachment to the Jansenists, obliged him afterwards to quit buh the congregation oi the oratory and the pulpit at the same time; but M. de Caylus, bishop of Auxerre, made him curate of Treigny in 1735. Persecution, however, still following him, he was sent to the Bastille, which he quitted in 1744, to be confined with the Minimes at Argenteuil. At length, when his weakened faculties made him considered as useless to his party, he was set at liberty, and died at Pnris in the bosom of his family, Jan. 2, 1752, leaving “Sermons,” 4 vols. 12mo, and an anonymous book entitled, “Lettres stir la Justice Chretienne,” which has been censured by the Sorbonne. ¹