Pierre Poiret
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After the early death of his parents, he supported himself by the engraver's trade and the teaching of French, at the same time studying theology, in Basel, Hanau, and, after 1668, Heidelberg. At Basel he was captivated by Descartes' philosophy, which never quite lost its hold on him. He read also Thomas à Kempis and Tauler, but was especially influenced by the writings of the Dutch Mennonite mystic Hendrik Jansen van Barrefelt (Hiël) (c. 1520 - c. 1594), whose works were published under the pseudonym of Hiël.[1][2]
In 1672 he became pastor of the French church at Annweiler in the duchy of Deux-Ponts. Here he became acquainted with Elisabeth, abbess of Herford, the granddaughter of James I of England and a noted mystic, with the Theologia Germanica, and with the writings of Antoinette Bourignon, which last supplied exactly what he wanted. The desire to make the acquaintance of this gifted woman took him to the Netherlands in 1676. He settled in Amsterdam, and published there in the following year his Cogitationes rationales de Deo, anima, et Malo, which gained him an immediate reputation for scholarship and philosophic insight. It is Cartesian in form; the Trinity is conceived in mathematical terms; all knowledge is to rest on evidence - but the end of this knowledge of God is practical, to lead distracted Christendom back to unity. The influence of Thomas à Kempis and Tauler is plainly visible.
From the Netherlands Poiret went on to Hamburg, still in quest of Antoinette Bourignon, was completely won by her at the first meeting, and until her death in 1680, he was her faithful disciple. He accompanied her in her wanderings, traveled several times as far as Holstein in connection with her exceedingly confused affairs, and returned to Amsterdam to see to the publication of her complete works, to which he prefixed a thoroughgoing defense of her and added a translation of the Göttliche Gesicht of Hans Engelbrecht, the Brunswick enthusiast. He defended her character and divine mission in a Mémoire touchant la vie de Mlle. A. Bourignon (1679), and championed her cause against Bayle and Seckendorf. He was also a warm admirer of Jane Lead. In 1688 he settled at Rijnsburg, where he busied himself on his own works and in multifarious labors for the Dutch booksellers, such as in the Dutch edition of Thierry Ruinart.
Pierre Poiret had multiple similarities to dispensationalism and has been said to have been the first theologian to develop a fully Dispensationalist system. He taught that history should be organized into multiple dispensations in which God works with humans in different ways, including the millennium as a future dispensation. Pierre also held to a future restoration of the nation of Israel.[3][4][5]
