Matthieu Cottière (Cotterius) (1581–1656)[1][2] was a French Reformed pastor at Tours and theological writer.[3]
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]
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 criticorumofMatthew Poole called him "vir doctus et acutus".[11]
A 1648 work Epistola ad Spanheimum, in the controversy over universal grace and Amyraldism,[22] was answered by Friedrich SpanheiminEpistola ad Cottierum (1648).[6][23]