reading. This judgment delighted Madame de Sevigné It is the most divine of all books (said she, in her turn); this estimation of it is general; I do not believe that any one ever spoke of religion like this man. The Due de Montausier, speaking of it one day with the Prussian ambassador, said, The only thing that grieves me is, that the author of the book should be at Berlin and not at Paris. . . . Some years after the publication of this masterpiece, Abbadie brought out his Treatise on the Divinity of Jesus Christ. Although not so successful, this book was not unworthy of its predecessor. It extorted from Pelisson the essence of the prayer of Polyeuctes for Pauline —
[“Seigneur! de vos bontés il faut que je l’obtienne,
Elle a trop devertus pour n’être pas Chrétienne”]:—
Lord! it is not without you that any one combats for you thus powerfully; deign to enlighten him more and more. [Seigneur, ce n’est pas sans vous qu’ on combat pour vous avec tant de force; daignez l’éclairer de plus en plus.] Pelisson and other eminent minds among the Catholics mistook the real tendencies of this defender of the Christian religion : they thought he had but a step to take to re-enter the pale of their church, and they held out a hand to help him to take that step. With some pride, Abbadie made them feel that they deceived themselves. Instead of returning to France after the death of the great Elector, he embarked for England with Marshal Schomberg, who had conceived the warmest friendship for him.”
These two theological treatises were translated into English, the first in 1694, the second in 1704, the translator of both being John Henry Lussan. As to the second, we find the date of the publication of the French original in Darling’s Cyclopaedia Bibliographica, “Traité de la Divinite de notre Seigneur Jesus Christ, Rotterdam, 1689.” The English translation, as re-issued in 1718, is remarkable for its grand title-page, “The Great and Stupendous Mystery of Man’s Salvation by Jesus Christ asserted and defended, in proving from the old and New Testament, the writings of the Fathers of the Primitive Church, and many other holy men and learned doctors the Divinity of our Blessed Saviour — that he is God co-eternal with the Father, and that by him and through him the heavens and earth and all things were created. Plainly confuting those that impiously hold the doctrine of the Arians and Socinians in our days — answering and repelling their objections, and silencing the strongest proofs and reasons they can bring to authorise their absurd assertions.” By James Abbadie, D.D., London, printed for John Morphew, near Stationers’ Hall, and are to be sold by the booksellers of London and Westminster, 1718." The concluding words are:—
“This treatise I dedicate to the glory of the Saviour. Forgive, O God, my imperfections and infirmities; and do thou thyself establish by thy Holy Spirit the sacred and eternal truths of thy gospel, that as thou hast been pleased to manifest thyself in the flesh, so all flesh may acknowledge thy glory. Amen.”
Dr. Abbadie accompanied the Marshal to Ireland, and did not return to England until after the victory of the Boyne, bereaved of his friend and patron. He served as one of the ministers of the church in the Savoy, where his “mild eloquence” “instilled peace into the souls of the numerous refugees who flocked to hear him.” Amidst the noise of the Irish camp, he began to write his book on “The Art of Knowing One-Self,” which has been praised as “a book of remarkably vigorous conception,” and “the most perfect of his religious treatises;” he finished it in London, and it was published in 1692 under the title, “L’Art de se connaitre soi-même, ou la Recherche des sources de la Morale.” A Romanist reprinted it at Lyons in 1693, leaving out all the passages which favour the Protestant religion. An English translation was published in 1694, with this advertisement, “The translator, by the author’s advice, retrenched from the former part of this treatise certain obscure and metaphysical passages, which may be seen in the original. In doing which, he has cut off rather superfluous and useless branches than any material or necessary part, and has rendered it more agreeable and fitted for every capacity. — April 29, 1694.” (A second edition appeared in 1698.)
In 1693 Dr. Abbadie published his “Defence of the British Nation,” occasioned by an anonymous pamphlet, which Weiss thus describes:—
“The Advice to the Refugees on their approaching return to France, which appeared in 1690, and which his enemies attributed to Bayle, although he never admitted himself to be its author, was a cutting pamphlet [his antoganist Jurieu having prophesied the triumphant return of the Protestants to France in 1689]. The author ironically congratulated the exiles. . . . . But he charitably warned them not to set foot in the kingdom without having previously undergone a slight quarantine, to purge them of two maladies contracted during their residence abroad, namely, the spirit of satire, and a certain republican spirit which tends to nothing less than to introduce anarchy, that great scourge of society.”
