Allen, John (2)

Allen, John a learned layman, was born at Truro, in Cornwall, England, in 1771, and conducted for upward of thirty years a private school in London, where he died June 17, 1839. He published a work on Modern Judaism (8vo, London, 1816 and 1830). Bickersteth calls it the best work on the subject in the English language. In 1813 he published a translation of Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, which has continued to be the standard English version of that great work, though it may now, perhaps (1862), be superseded by Beveridge's new translation. Allen's edition of the Institutes was reprinted at New York (1819, 4to), and often since in 2 vols. 8vo, in which form it is issued by the Presbyterian Board of Publication, Philadelphia. — Darling, Cyclopoedia Bibliographica, 1, 49; Allibone, Dictionary of Authors, 1, 53.