Ferrier, John

, a French Jesuit, and a native of Rouergue, and confessor to the king of France, was born in 1614, and turned a Jesuit in 1632. He had taught philosophy fonr years, divinity twelve years, and ethics two years. He had been principal of the college of Toulouse, and had acquitted himself very well of that employment. The Jesuits probably looked upon him as a very able man, since they designed to make him the king’s confessor, to which office he was promoted in 1670. He died in the convent of the Jesuits at Paris, October 29, 1674. He was one of the ablest antagonists of Jansenius’s followers, and his thesis concerning probability, which hq maintained at Toulouse the 8th and the llth of June 1659, made a considerable noise. He wrote a Latin answer to father Baron’s objections against the “Scientia media,” entitled “Responsio ad Objectiones Vincentianas,” Toulouse, 1668, 8vo. He intended also to publish a body of divinity, but only the first volume of it has been printed, which treats <c Of the Unity of God according to St. Augustin and St. Thomas’s principles." His other works are written in French, and relate for the most part to Jansenism. He wrote two letters against Arnauld, and he gave an account of all that passed in 1653, concerning the affair of Jansenism. According to the bibliographer of the Jesuits, he wrote a book concerning the immortality of the soul in 1660, and another on the beauty of Jesus Christ in 1657 but these were the production of John Ferrier, a Jesuit of Guienne. ²

|