ACOSTA, Uriel d., a Portuguese of noble family, a Jew by descent, was born at Oporto towards the close of the sixteenth century. Brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, and naturally of a religious disposition, he was a strict observer of the rites of the church till the course of his inquiries led him, after much painful doubt, to abandon the religion of his youth. Apparently ignorant of any other form of Christianity, he sought refuge in Judaism, and passing over to Amsterdam, was received into the synagogue, after undergoing the rite of circumcision, and having his name changed from Gabriel to Uriel. He soon discovered, however, that those who sat in Moses' seat were shameful perverters of his law; and his bold protests served only to exasperate the rabbis, who finally punished his contumacy with the greater excommunication. Persecution seemed only to stimulate his temerity, and he soon after published a defence, in which he not merely exposed the departures of the Jewish teachers from the law, but combated the doctrine of a future life, in which he held himself supported by
the silence of the Mosaic Books. For this he was imprisoned and fined, besides incurring public odium as a blasphemer and atheist. Nothing deterred, he pursued his speculations, which ended in his repudiating the divine authority of the law of Moses. Wearyed, however, by his melancholy isolation, and longing for the benefits of society, he was driven, in the inconsistency of despairing scepticism, to seek a return to the Jewish communion. Having recanted his heresies, he was re-admitted after an excommunication of 15 years. He soon made himself again obnoxious to discipline, and was excommunicated a second time. After seven years of miserable exclusion, he once more sought admission, and after passing through a humiliating penance was again received. These notices of his singular and unhappy life are taken from his Exemplar Humanae Vitæ, published and refuted by Limborch. He died by his own hand, after an ineffectual attempt on the life of his most bitter persecutor.