PETER, a French Protestant divine, was born at Alencon in France, in the year 1641. He became a learned divine of the English church, and a strenuous defender of the Protestant faith. At the time when the edict of Nantes tolerated and protected the Protestants of France, he entered upon his clerical profession, and remained minister of Rouen until the 35th year of his age. In this period he wrote several pieces upon the controversy between the Papists and the Protestants, which obtained him great fame among his own party. He removed to Charenton in the vicinity of Paris, which was the principal church among the reformed, and frequented by persons of the first rank in France who professed the Protestant faith. Here Allix preached a course of excellent sermons in defence of the Protestant religion, some of which were afterwards printed in Holland, and added to his increasing fame. The chief object of these sermons was to repel the attack of the bishop of Meaux, the most ingenious and able opponent of the Reformation at that time. The unwise revocation of the edict of Nantes drove Allix and many others to seek refuge in England. Three years after his arrival in England, he had made himself so perfectly master of the English language, as to be able to write very correctly a Defence of the Christian Religion. This work he dedicated to James II, in testimony of gratitude for his kind reception of the distressed refugees of France. Not long after his arrival in England he was honoured with the title of doctor of divinity, and also received the more substantial honour of being appointed treasurer of the church of Salisbury. Allix still maintained the station of a champion for the Protestant cause, and in opposition to the bishop of Meaux proved that the charge of heresy justly belonged to the Papists, and not to their opponents, because they had introduced new doctrines into the church.

After having with much industry and learning exercised his talents in defence of Protestantism, he employed his pen to support the doctrine of the Trinity against the Unitarians, who contended that the idea of Christ's divinity could be traced up no higher than the time of Justin Martyr. With a great display of erudition, he attempted to prove that the Trinitarian doctrine was believed by the Jewish church. But the reputation which he had acquired for learning and ability was somewhat diminished, by the ridicule which he brought upon himself in attempting to fix the precise time of Christ's second coming to the year 1720, or, at the very latest, to the year 1736. He died at London in the year 1717, after his studious life had been protracted to the length of 76 years.