a denomination given to the inhabitants of the earth, conceived, by some people, to have lived before Adam.

Isaac de la Pereyra, in 1655, published a book to evince the reality of Preadamites, by which he gained a considerable number of proficients to the opinion: but the answer of Demarets, professor of theology at Groningen, published the year following, put a stop to its progress; though Pereyra made a reply.

His system was this: The Jews he calls Adamites, and supposes them to have issued from Adam; and gives the title Preadamites to the Gentiles, whom he supposes to have been a long time before Adam. But this being expressly contrary to the first words of Gene- sis, Percyra had recourse to the fabulous antiquities of the Egyptians and Chaldeans, and to some idle rabbins, who imagined there had been another world before that described by Moses. He was apprehended by the inquisition in Flanders, and very roughly used, though in the service of the dauphin. But he appealed from their sentence to Rome; whither he went in the time of Alexander VII, and where he printed a retraction of his book of Preadamites. See Pre-existence.