Casel, John

, a German divine, was originally of the Netherlands, but born at Gottingen in the duchy of Brunswick, May 18, 1533, of a family that had been ruined in the wars for religion. His father, who had embraced the principles of the reformers, taught and preached in England, Scotland, and Spain. The son studied at various academies, and had, among his other masters, Melancthon and Camerarius. In 1563 he was invited to the chair of philosophy and eloquence at Rostock, and in a tour to Italy received the degree of doctor of laws in the university of

| Pisa. He was afterwards professor of philosophy at Helmstadt, where he died April 9, 1613. He carried on a correspondence with most of the learned men of his time. He was particularly conversant in the Greek fathers. Along with Dr. Duncan Liddel and Cornelius Martin, he opposed the opinion of Daniel Hoffman, and some others, who maintained that philosophy was irreconcileable with theology, and that there are many things true in the latter which are false in the former. He wrote a great many works in verse and prose, and in Greek and Latin, principally annotations on Cebes’ Table, Epictetus, Xenophon’s Cyropsedia, Demetrius Phalereus, Xenophon’s Memorabilia, &c. and a collection of letters, Francfort, 1687, 8vo. Many of his letters also occur in the writings of his contemporaries. His life is in “Vitæ eruditissimorum in re litteraria virorum,” Leipsic, 1713, 8vo. ¹