JOHANN LORENZ VON

MOSHEIM (c. 1694-1755)  , German Lutheran divine and Church historian, was born at Lubeck on the 9th of October, 1694 or 1695 . After studying at the gymnasium of his native place, he entered the university of Kiel (1716), where he took his master's degree in 1718 . In 1719 he became assessor in the philosophical faculty at Kiel . His first appearance in the field of literature was in a polemical tract against John Toland, Vindiciae antiquae christianorum disciplinae (1720), which was soon followed by a volume of Observationes sacrae (1721) . These works, along with the reputation he had acquired as a lecturer and preacher, secured for him a call to Helmstedt as professor erdinarius in 1723 . The Institutionum historiae ecclesiasticae libri IV. appeared in 1726, and in the same year he was appointed by the duke of Bruns-wick abbot of Marienthal, to which dignity and emolument the abbacy of Michaelstein was added in the following year . Mosheim was much consulted by the authorities when the new university of Gottingen was being formed; especially in the framing of the statutes of the theological faculty, and the provisions for making the theologians independent of the ecclesiastical courts . In 1747 he was made chancellor of the university . He died at Gottingen on the 9th of September . Among his other works were De rebus christianorum ante Constantinum commentarii (1753), Ketzer-Geschichte (2nd ed . 1748), and Sittenlehre der heiligen Schrift (1735–53) . His exegetical writings, characterized by learning and good sense, include Cogitationes in N .

T. loc. select . (1726), and expositions of 1

Cor . (1741) and the two Epistles to Timothy (1755) . In his sermons (Heilige Reden) considerable eloquence is shown, and a mastery of style which justifies the position he held as president of the German Society . There are two English versions of the Institutes, that of Archibald Maclaine, published in 1764, and that of James Murdock (1832), which is the more correct . Murdock's translation was revised and re-edited by James Seaton Reid in 1848, and by H . L . Hastings in 1892 (Boston) . An English translation of the De rebus christianorum was published by Murdock in 1851 .