VINCENT, BOYD: Protestant Episcopal bishop of southern Ohio; b. at Erie, Pa., May 18, 1845. He was graduated from Yale (A.B., 1867) and Berkeley Divinity School, Middletown, Conn.(1871); was curate of St. Paul's, Erie (1871-72); rector of Cross and Crown Church, in the same city (1872-1874), and of Calvary Church, Pittsburg, Pa. (1874-89); became bishop coadjutor of southern Ohio (1889); and on the retirement of Bishop T. A. Jaggar (1904) became diocesan of the see. He has written God and Prayer: A Discourse on, the Reasonableness of Prayer (New York, 1897).

Bibliography: w. S. Perry, The EPiacopate in America, p. 311, New York, 1895.

VINCENT, van"sdn', JACQUES LOUIS SAMUEL: French Protestant; b. at Nimes Sept. 8, 1787; d. near there July 10, 1837. After studying at Uzbs and Montpellier, he pursued a theological training at Geneva (1806-09), and in 1809 was chosen assistant pastor in his native city, where he remained until physical infirmity compelled him to retire to his suburban estate. His greatest services were the reestablishment and promotion of theological studies in the Reformed church in France. Napoleon I. had indeed given the church a care-free existence by including it in the concordat of 1801 (see Concordats,etc., VI., 1), but its theological statue was at low ebb, and the seminary at Lausanne was a school for martyrs, not scholars. Vincent was one of the first to perceive the need of remedying the deficiencies, and to the preparation of a French theological literature for French Protestantism he devoted a large portion of his activity. Feeling especially attracted by English moral philosophy he translated, in 1817, Paley's work on that subject, and two years later reproduced the thoughts of Chalmers under the title Preuves et autorifk de la r4v6lation chrétienne. The problem of authority afforded him the material for his first independent book, in which he crossed swords with the Abby de Lamennais, showing in his Observations sur l'unitk religieuse (Paris, 1820) that while Ultramontanism (q.v.) absorbs the individual in the mass, Protestantism should preserve and increase the freedom and responsibility of each separate person. To the reply of De Lamennais Vincent answered in his Observations sur la vole d'awtoriti; appliquEe d la religion (1821), by which he attracted the attention of the cultured circles of France and inspired his coreligionista to assume the defensive.

Vincent now sought to acquaint French Protestantism with German theology, writing at first for F. Monod's Archives du claristianisme, and then editing the Melanges de religion, de morale et de critique sctcree (10 vols., 1820-24), for which he wrote nearly all the articles. In 1829 he published a sketch of the theory of Protestantism in his Vises sur le protestuntisme en France. Originally conservative in his dogmatic views, Vincent was led by German theology to a position akin to that of Schleiermacher and to a warm sympathy for living piety irrespective of ecclesiastical or dogmatic guise.

In 1830, after the publication of his Vises, Vin cent was the leading man in the Reformed Church of France. He declined calls to Montauban and to Strasburg, but after the revolution of 1830 was elected president of the consistory of Nimes, a posi tion from which his republicanism had caused the ministry to exclude him two years before. In the latter years of his life he retired more and more from public duties, though in 1831-33 he lectured on the modern literature of Spain and Italy. Be sides the works already mentioned, he was the author of Meditations religieuses (Paris, 1829), and in his memory the Liberals founded at Nimes in 1892 the )Jcole Samuel Vincent for the promotion of the preparatory studies of candidates for the ministry.

(Eugen Lachenmann.)

Bibliography: The posthumous editions of Vincent's Yuea and his M_ditations usually contain sketches of his life.

Consult further: A. Michel, Samuel Vincent, son temps