Prades (Jean Martin de), French theologian b. Castel-Sarrasin, about 1720. Brought up for the church, he nevertheless became intimate with Diderot and contributed the article Certitude to the Encyclopédie. On the 18th Nov. 1751 he presented to the Sorbonne a thesis for the doctorate, remarkable as the first open attack on Christianity by a French theologian. He maintained many propositions on the soul, the origin of society, the laws of Moses, miracles, etc., contrary to the dogmas of the Church, and compared the cures recorded in the Gospels to those attributed to Esculapius. The thesis made a great scandal. His opinions were condemned by Pope Benedict XIV., and he fled to Holland for safety. Recommended to Frederick the Great by d'Alembert he was received with favor at Berlin, and became reader to that monarch, who wrote a very anti-Christian preface to de Prades' work on ecclesiastical history, published as Abrége de l'Histoire ecclesiastique de Fleury, Berne (Berlin) 1766. He retired to a benefice at Glogau (Silesia), given him by Frederick, and died there in 1782. Prater (Horatio), a gentleman of some fortune who devoted himself to the propagation of Freethought ideas. Born early in the century, he wrote on the Physiology of the Blood, 1832. He published Letters to the American People, and Literary Essays, '56. Died 20 July, 1885. He left the bulk of his money to benevolent objects, and ordered a deep wound to be made in his arm to insure that he was dead. Preda (Pietro), Italian writer of Milan, author of a work on Revelation and Reason, published at Geneva, 1865, under the pseudonym of "Padre Pietro." Premontval (Andre Pierre Le Guay de), French writer, b. Charenton, 16 Feb. 1716. At nineteen years of age, while in the college of Plessis Sorbonne, he composed a work against the dogma of the Eucharist. He studied mathematics and became member of the Academy of Sciences at Berlin. He wrote Le Diogene de D'Alembert, or Freethoughts on Man, 1754, Panangiana Panurgica, or the false Evangelist, and Vues Philosophiques, Amst., 2 vols., 1757. He also wrote De la Théologie de L'Etre, in which he denies many of the ordinary proofs of the existence of a God. Died Berlin, 1767.