Daille, Jean
DAILLE, JEAN (DALLAEUS, JEAN) (1594-1670), French Protestant divine, was born at Chatellerault and educated at Poitiers and Saumur. From 1612 to 1621 he was tutor to two of the grandsons of Philippe de Mornay, seigneur du Plessis Marly. Ordained to the ministry in 1623, he was for some time private chaplain to Du Plessis Mornay, whose memoirs he subsequently wrote. In 1625 Daille was appointed minister of the church of Saumur, and in 1626 was chosen by the Paris consistory to be minister of the church of Charenton. Of his works, which are principally controversial, the best known is the treatise Du vrai emploi des Peres (1631), translated into English by Thomas Smith under the title A Treatise concerning the right use of the Fathers (1651). The work attacks those who made the authority of the Fathers conclusive on matters of faith and practice. Daille contends that the text of the Fathers is often corrupt, and that even when it is correct their reasoning is often illogical. In his Sermons on the Philippians and Colossians, Daille vindicated his claim to rank as a great preacher as well as an able controversialist. He was president of the last national synod held in France, which met at Loudun in 1659 (H. M. Baird, Thf Huguenots and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 1895, ' pp. 412 ff.), when, as in the Apologie des Synodes d'Alen^on et de Charenton (1655), ne defended the universalism of Moses Amyraut. He wrote also Apologie pour les Eglises Riformies and La Foy fondte sur les Saintes Ecritures. His life was written by his son Adrien, who retired to Zurich at the revocation of the edict of Nantes.
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
