Works
Abbadie is best known by his religious treatises, several of which were translated from the original French into other languages and had a wide circulation throughout Europe. The most important of these are Traite de la verité de la religion chrétienne (1684); its continuation, Traité de la divinité de Jesus-Christ (1689); and L'Art de se connaitre soi-meme (1692).
While at Berlin he made several visits to the Netherlands, in 1684, 1686, and 1688, chiefly for the purpose of superintending the printing of several of his works, including the Traité de la Vérité, 1684. The book went through a vast number of editions and was translated into several languages, an English version, by Henry Lussan, appearing in 1694. Completed by a third volume, the Traité de la Divinité de Nôtre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, it appeared at Rotterdam, 1689. An English translation, entitled A Sovereign Antidote against Arian Poyson, appeared in London, 1719, and again ‘revised, corrected, and, in a few places, abridged, by Abraham Booth,’ under the title of The Deity of Jesus Christ essential to the Christian Religion, 1777. The entire apology for Christianity formed by the three volumes of the Traité, which combated severally the heresies of atheism, deism, and Socinianism, was received with praise. La Vérité de la Religion Chrétienne Réformée (1717) was a controversial treatise which in its four parts attacks the characteristic doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church; it was translated into English, for the use of the Roman Catholics of his diocese of Dromore, by Dr. Ralph Lambert, afterwards bishop of Meath. The work was completed in 1723 in Le Triomphe de la Providence et de la Religion; ou, l'Ouverture des sept Seaux par le Fils de Dieu, où l'on trouvera la première partie de l'Apocalypse clairement expliquée par ce qu'il y a de plus connu dans l'Histoire et de moins contesté dans la Parole de Dieu. Avec une nouvelle et très-sensible Démonstration de la Vérité de la Religion Chrétienne.
It was in the Irish camp with Schomberg that Abbadie commenced one of his most successful works, which was published at Rotterdam in 1692, as L'Art de se connoître soi-même; ou, La Recherche des Sources de la Morale, and went through many editions and amplifications. Translations of this work into other languages include a popular English version by the Rev. Thomas Woodcock, The Art of Knowing One-self, 1694. The last 50 pages of this 274-page work deals with pride, which he divided into five branches: love of esteem, presumptuousness, vanity, ambition and arrogance.
Among the early writings of Abbadie were four Sermons sur divers Textes de l'Ecriture, 1680; Réflexions sur la Présence réelle du Corps de Jésus-Christ dans l'Eucharistie, 1685; and two highly adulatory addresses on persons in high stations, entitled respectively Panégyrique de Monseigneur l'Electeur de Brandebourg, 1684; and Panégyrique de Marie Stuart, Reine d'Angleterre, d'Ecosse, de France, et d'Irlande, de glorieuse et immortelle mémoire, décédée à Kensington le 28 décembre 1694, 1695, also published in England as A Panegyric on our late Sovereign Lady, 1695. These four productions, with other occasional sermons, were in 1760 republished collectively, in three volumes, at Amsterdam, and preceded by an Essai historique sur la Vie et les Ouvrages de M. Abbadie. The pamphlet on the Eucharist was also reprinted at Toulouse, in 1835, under the title of Quatre Lettres sur la Trans-substantiation, and appeared in an English translation, by John W. Hamersley, as the Chemical Change in the Eucharist, 1867.
Défense de la Nation Britannique, 1693 was an elaborate defence of the Glorious Revolution, written in answer to Pierre Bayle's Avis important aux Réfugiés, 1690. He gave a funeral oration on Queen Mary. Abbadie had also written, at the request of the king, Histoire de la dernière Conspiration d'Angleterre, 1696, a history of the conspiracy of 1696, which was reprinted in Holland and translated into English, and for which the Earl of Portland and Secretary Sir William Trumbull placed original documents at the author's disposal. This work helped Abbadie's preferment. After its production, "his majesty sent him to Ireland, with an order to the lords justices to confer upon him some dignity in the church, which order was complied with by his promotion to the deanery of Killalow" (Daily Courant, 5 October 1727).
He revised his works for a complete edition in four volumes, in which were also to be included two unpublished treatises, Nouvelle Manière de prouver l'Immortalité de l'Ame, and Notes sur le Commentaire philosophique de M. Bayle. No trace of them could be found after his death.
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