Jakob Abbadie

 ABBADIE, JAKOB (1654?-1727), Swiss Protestant divine, was born at Nay in Bern.  He studied at Sedan, Saumur and Puylaurens, with such success that he received the degree of doctor in theology at the age of seventeen.  After spending some years in Berlin as minister of a French Protestant church, where he had great success as a preacher, he accompanied Marshal Schomberg, in 1688, to England, and next year became minister of the French church in the Savoy, London.  His strong attachment to the cause of King William appears in his elaborate defence of the Revolution (Defense de la nation britannique, 1692) as well as in his history of the conspiracy of 1696 (Histoire de la grande conspiration d’Angleterre). The king promoted him to the deanery of Killaloe in Ireland.  He died in London in 1727. 

Abbadie was a man of great ability and an eloquent preacher, but 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 verite de la religion chretienne (1684); its continuation, Traite de la divinite de Jesus-Christ (1689); and L’Art de se connaitre soi-meme (1692).