College Hill, which had belonged to a Duke of Buckingham, then deceased, and was known as Buckingham House. Finally, through a lease, dated 3rd February 1699, they got possession of a church in Martin’s Lane in the City, called St. Martin Orgars.
Monsieur Allix’s first publication in England was dated 20th December 1686, and was published in 1687, “à Londres,” by “Jean Cailloué, Marchand Libraire dans le Strand au long d’ Exceter Exchange à la Librairie Francoise”; it was entitled, “Reflexions sur les Cinq Livres de Moyse pour etablir la verité de la Religion Chrétienne.” The author’s name is not on the title-page, but is signed to the Epistle Dedicatory to King James, in which “P. Allix” dwells upon his Majesty’s hospitality to the refugees — describes himself as jouissant d’un heureux azyle dans Vos Etats, and as speaking to Votre Majeste as a representative of ceux de notre nation qui ont cherché du repos à l’ombre de Son Sceptre, and also pays a tribute to le feu roi de glorieuse memoire. In the same year he published a second volume, extending his remarks to the complete Scriptures, and describing the entire work as Reflexions sur les livres de l’ Ecriture Sainte. The work became well-known when it appeared as an English translation, 7th May 1688, with a Dedicatory Epistle from which I quote a few sentences:—
“To the King. Great Sir, — The gracious acceptance, which your Majesty was pleased to allow the first volume (of my ‘Reflexions upon the Holy Scriptures to establish the Truth of the Christian Religion’), encouraged and almost necessitated me to the further presumption of laying these two volumes at this time at your Majesty’s feet. Your Majesty did me the honour to say, That you were pleased to see divines apply themselves to the clearing of subjects so important. . . . . As your Majesty continues still to give such illustrious instances of your clemency and royal protection to those of our nation; so I confess, Sir, I thought myself under an obligation to lay hold of this opportunity of publishing what all those, who find so sure a protection in your Majesty’s dominions, feel and think (as much as myself) upon these new testimonies of your royal bounty. . . . . The whole world, Sir, which has received upon all its coasts some remainder of our shipwreck, is filled with admiration of the unexampled effects of your Majesty’s clemency. . . . . We must, Sir, be wholly insensible, if we had not all of us the highest sense of so great a bounty; and we should justly appear to the whole world to be unworthy of this your paternal care, if, notwithstanding that low condition to which we are now reduced, we should not prostrate ourselves before your august throne, with the humblest demonstrations of thankfulness. . . . . This, Sir, is my whole aim in the dedication of this work to your Majesty; and may your sacred Majesty be pleased to approve of these poor testimonies of our thankfulness in general, and to look upon them as instances of mine in particular, and of that profound respect with which I am, &c.
Allix was, with his pen, the incessant and victorious adversary of the crafty Bishop Bossuet; and however thankful to his Jacobite Majesty, he could never forget that he himself was a Protestant refugee, and that, after the characteristic atrocities of 1685 he was more than ever called to continue the good fight. A farewell sermon, which he had prepared in Paris, but which he found that he could not deliver at Charenton “without danger to himself and his congregation,” he printed and published in his haven of refuge — also a volume containing two practical treatises, “Maximes du vrai Chrétien,” and “Bonnes et saintes pensées pour tous les jours du mois” (1687).
The advent of King William occasioned his pamphlet, entitled, “An Examination of the Scruples of those who refuse to take the Oaths” (1689).[1] Tillotson, in a letter to Lady Russell, dated London, September 19, 1688, gives a list of clerical appointments, which concludes thus:— “and, which grieves me much, Monsieur Allix is put by at present.” Allix was consoled by receiving admiration and honours. The clergy fixed upon him as the best man to write a complete History of Councils, in several folio volumes: this work could not be completed for want of funds. It, drew forth the only gift he seems ever to have obtained under the Protestant succession from high places, namely, an order from the House of Commons that all the paper brought from Holland for printing it should be exempt from duty.
- ↑ The Dictionary of Anonymous Literature gives the following title:—
Reflections on the opinions of some modern divines concerning the nature of government in general, and that of England in particular. With an Appendix relating to this matter, containing —
I. The seventy-fifth canon of the Council of Toledo. II. The original articles in Latin out of which the Magna Charta of King John was framed. III. The true Magna Charta of King John, in French: by which the Magna Charta in Matth. Paris is cleared and justified, and the alterations in the common Magna Charta discovered, of which see a more particular account in the advertisement before the Appendix. All Three Englished. 4to. London, 1689. [By Peter Allix, D.D.]
