Addison, Esq., by Mr Des Maizeaux,” and is dated London, November 24th, 1711. Volumes I. and II. of Boileau’s Works were published in 1712. Afterwards a posthumous volume appeared, “London, Printed for E. Curll at the Dial and Bible against St. Dunstan’s Church in Elect-street. 1713. Price 3s. 6d.; where may be had the two former Volumes of M. Boileau’s Works, Price 12s.” The most interesting item in verse is “The Satire upon Equivocation, against the Jesuits,” — and in prose, “A critical dispute between Monsieur Boileau, M. Huet, Bishop of Avranches, and M. Le Clerc, concerning the sublimity of this passage in Genesis, And God said, Let there be light — and there was light.” This collection of Boileau’s Works was complete and serviceable; but, being printed fragmentary and economically, it has no external elegance, except the engraved portrait of Monsieur Boileau Despreaux.
*⁎* Mr Wagner sends me the following note from the register of St Paul’s, Covent Garden:— “Marriage, 1740, Feb. 2. Peter Des Maizeaux to Ann Brown.”
Chapter X.
THE REFUGEE CLERGY— FIRST GROUP.
I. James Abbadie, D.D.
Jacques Abbadie was born at Nay, in Bearn, in the kingdom of Navarre, in the year 1654. To the pasteur of that country town, Jean de la Placette, a celebrated moralist,[1] he owed his early education. He completed his studies at Puylaurens, Saumur, and Sedan; — at the last-named university he took the degree of Doctor of Divinity at the age of seventeen. He never had a congregation in France; although but for the gloomy prospects of Protestantism in that country, “his own, his native land,” he would have refused the offer which enabled him to leave it quietly, and with royal permission. Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, had resolved to found a church in Berlin, where public worship should be conducted in the French language. He sent the Count d’Espense to Paris to select a minister, and the Envoy’s choice fell on Abbadie, who accepted the appointment. The date of his arrival in the Prussian capital is not preserved. Before leaving France he had earned the reputation of a master in controversial writing. He wrote four letters on Transubstantiation, which have been translated and published by John W. Hamersley, A.M., with the title, “The Chemical Change in the Eucharist — in four letters, showing the relations of faith to sense, from the French of Jacques Abbadie.” The learned translator gives the history of them:—
- ↑ La Placette’s treatise on conscience, entitled “The Christian Casuist,” was translated into English by Kennett in 1705. The translator differed from some sentiments in the chapter Of Ecclesiastical Ordinances, and therefore he subjoined a statement of the difference between the Anglican and French churches as to the obligation to submission to such ordinances, specially on the ground of their receiving a concurrent sanction from the Christian sovereign of the country. The difference appears in interpretations of the text in Luke xxii., “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them . . . but ye shall not be so” [or as Matt. xx. 26, has it, “but it shall not be so among you.”] Kennett informs us, “As to the disputed text, the generality of French divines of the Protestant Communion agree with our Dissenters in maintaining that it utterly prohibits the conjunction of civil and ecclesiastical power in the same person.” The opposite opinion is expressed by Hooker, who says, that our Lord’s complete statement amounts to this, that the servants of the kings of nations may hope to receive from them large and ample secular preferments; but not so the servants of Christ; they are not to expect such gifts from him: “Ye are not to look for such preferments at my hands; your reward is in heaven; submission, humility, meekness, are things fitter here for you, whose chiefest honour must be to suffer for righteousness’ sake.”
