informality the translation was refused, and Claude went home. The Synod sat for nearly three weeks, and there was both a forenoon and an afternoon sermon every day; very many of these sermons were preached by Allix. Unfortunately a Roman Catholic nobleman was always present as a Royal Commissioner or spy. During a sermon upon morality, Allix remarked upon the morals of the Roman Catholic people, and went on to use vehement invectives. His lordship started up and said, “Sir, if you go on in that tone, I shall have you removed from that pulpit, and from this assembly; learn to speak respectfully of the religion professed by your Sovereign.” What could the preacher do, but utter something like an apology and preach more quietly.
At the Revocation he and his colleagues were ordered to quit Paris immediately, having only forty-eight hours allowed them for packing up. The Charenton temple was demolished without a day’s delay. (A Benedictine monastery was afterwards built on the site, and a small Roman Catholic church, dedicated to the “Holy Sacrament.”)
Allix retired to St. Denys, and obtained a passport to England with some difficulty. He was accompanied by his wife, whose maiden name was Margaret Roger, and by his sons, John, Peter, and James. From a letter written by Seignelay from Versailles (9th February 1686), it appears that some of his family remained in France:— “The family of the minister Allix, who is in London, have become sincere converts here in Paris." The writer proceeds to say to the Envoy Bonrepaus,” If you could get at that minister, and prevail upon him to return to France with the intention of being converted, you need not hesitate to offer him a pension of 3000 or 4000 livres; and if it were necessary to go further, I doubt not but that upon the advice you would give me of it, the king would consent to even more liberal settlements.” On 8th July 1686, Evelyn writes, “I waited on the Archbishop at Lambeth, where I dined, and met the famous preacher and writer, Monsieur Allix, doubtless a most excellent and learned person; the Archbishop and he spoke Latin together, and that very readily.”[1]
King James II. gave him a patent, dated 10th July 1686, to found in London a French Church, with the Anglican ritual. And here I have to give another quotation from Wodrow, who says:—
“Mr. Webster tells me that he had an account (I think from one of the French ministers in Edinburgh) that when they were forced out of France in 1685, Monsieur Allix was the first who submitted to re-ordination in England — that he was so choaked [shocked?] when he saw Monsieur Allix re-ordained, and a declaration made that he was [had been] no minister, and the reflection cast on the whole ministry of France and the Reformed Churches, that he could not bear it but came to Scotland.”
In palliation of this accusation I may suggest that the Presbyterian view of ordination is that it is the solemn setting apart of a minister to the charge of the congregation and district, which at that date he has undertaken to serve. In Scotland and Ireland there is the “laying on of the hands of the Presbytery” on the head of the minister, only on his being installed in his first church; on his removal or translation to a new sphere of ministerial labour, the ordination questions are again put to him as before, but there is no “laying on of hands,” the ceremony being then called his induction (in Scotland) or his installation (in Ireland). Mr. Allix may have regarded the ceremonial, to which he submitted, in the light only of an induction or installation, and not of re-ordination. He certainly in several of his books styles himself a “Divine of the Church of England.” As such he co-operated with the leading established clergy in the composition of the learned tracts against Popery, which were originally intended to counteract the pamphlets by Romish divines issued by King James’s printers, but which are still read and admired. Allix contributed three brief and weighty discourses to the series, the first licensed on 1st April, the second on 31st May, and the third on 15th August, all in the year 1688. — (1st) “A discourse concerning the merit of Good Works;” (2nd) “An Historical Discourse concerning the necessity of the Minister’s Intention in administering the Sacraments;” (3rd) “A Discourse concerning Penance showing how the Doctrine of it, in the Church of Rome, makes void True Repentance.”
The French congregation, to which Monsieur Allix ministered, assembled in Jewin Street, Aldersgate. On 8th November gi, they removed to Brewers’ Hall. Next, on 26th February 1693, they removed to a hall in a private mansion on
- ↑ Anne Allix, widow of Abraham Guillotin, of Rouen, remained in that city after the Revocation, and ma sent to the prison of Le Pont-de-l’Arche on 23rd July 16S9, for harbouring Protestants and permitting meetings for Protestant worship in her house. Her brother-in-law, le Sieur Jacob Guillotin, was also a steadfast Protestant at that date.
