Abbadie’s reply was equally ironical, and more courteous. Republican spirit and anarchy had been imputed to the refugees, because they approved of the English Revolution of 1688, which had dethroned a king, and had done uncourtly homage to the popular voice. It was thus that a “Defence of the Huguenot Refugees” resolved itself into a “Defense de la Nation Britannique, ou, Les Droits de Dieu, de la Nature et de la Societé clairement etablis au sujet de la Revolution d’Angleterre, contre l’Auteur de l’Avis important aux Refugiés.” The neat pocket volume contains four Letters, of which the first three fill only 190 pages altogether, while the fourth occupies the remaining 326.
Bayle’s offensive book, to which Abbadie replied, was printed at Paris, with a licence from Louis XIV., it was entitled, “Avis Important aux Refugiez sur leur prochain Retour en France, donné pour etrennes à l’un d’eux en 1690. Par Monsieur, C.L.A.A.P.D.P. A Paris. Chez la Veuve de Gabriel Martin, rue S. Jacques, au soleil d’or. 1692. Avec Privilege du Roy.” Abbadie’s reply gradually slid into a defence of the rival monarch, William III., though he had many fine passages on his proper subject; for instance, in some keen and powerful sentences, he ridiculed Bayle’s insinuation that the refugees on their return home might be dangerous to public tranquillity, because men who had shed so much ink in exposing the horrible cruelty of the recent persecutions, would probably take advantage of a tempting opportunity to shed the blood of their former persecutors.
Dr. Abbadie’s Panegyric on our good Queen Mary, who died on 28th December 1694, was probably preached as a Funeral Sermon in the French Church in the Savoy. The French original is to be found in the collected edition of Abbadie’s Sermons et Panégyriques (published in three volumes, Amsterdam, 1760). I have now before me the spirited English translation of the wonderful oration, entitled, “A Panegyric on our late Sovereign Lady, Mary, Queen of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, of glorious and immortal memory. By James Abbadie, D.D., Minister of the Savoy.” A few passages from it will be interesting to my readers:—
“In vain we strive to eternize the memory of heroes . . . if we do not labour to revive the spirit that animated them, and to immortalize their glory by a careful imitation of their actions. Only such an elogy is worthy of Mary, a queen the exemplar of her subjects, a heroine the model of queens, elevated above her rank by her virtues, and even in some measure raised above her virtues by her modesty. . . . She condemned thankfulness to silence, and made this seeming ingratitude the condition of her favours. With one hand she dried the tears of the afflicted, and with the other drew a veil over their misery. . . . But in vain she imposed a silence which sooner or later would certainly be broken. The whole universe, that was a witness of her virtues — the world that is filled with her charity, which she scattered through all nations and all climates — such an infinite number of persons that felt the consoling influence of her bounty, cry so much the louder after her death as they were forced to be silent during her life. Imprisoned gratitude shakes off its fetters. . . .
“The merit of our illustrious Mary was great, but it was not greater than her destiny. . . . The State demanded our Princess as its sure refuge and the source of all its comforts; and superstition courted her for a support and foundation of its hopes. . . . She believed that she owed herself to God and to the State, and that she could not answer the call of heaven but by devoting herself entirely to her country and her religion. . . . With an unshaken constancy, she reserved herself for that important and necessary marriage, to which the Church and the State, the Parliament and Council, and God and the King, had appointed her. Never was the public joy better grounded than on this occasion. For then it was that Providence laid the foundations of the public liberty; and to this happy marriage we owe the succeeding union of England and Holland, and the general confederacy of their allies. When the Prince went to England, accompanied with the prayers and acclamations of the whole world that was concerned in the success of his voyage, he seemed to ask the Princess, in the name of all those nations that were one day to owe their liberty to this blessed match. And, if I might be allowed to join the present events with the occurrences of those times, I would not scruple to affirm that their contract of marriage was a treaty which God by his Providence negotiated with all the nations of Europe, for their common defence and preservation. . . .
“We may easily remember that time which our latest posterity shall never forget, for they also are concerned in it — a time, in which God set bounds to the oppression of the people, and to the affliction of his Church, in which, by one sudden stroke, he stopped the progress of that Power which threatened to devour all the world — in which he preserved the earth from the overbearing inundations of that raging sea, by writing on the sand, Hitherto shall thou come and no further. We saw, and still have before our eyes that important juncture of affairs, when the all-wise governor of the world, who disposes second causes according to his pleasure, thought fit to chain the preservation of England, and of so many other countries to the resolution of one man — when the laws, rights, liberty, and religion of so many nations were entrusted by Providence to the inconstancy of the waves — when even the tempests served in so admirable a manner to advance the work of our deliverance, when unbloody victories executed the