Eberhard, John Augustine

, a Swedish divine, who became professor of philosophy at the university of Halle, and died at Stockholm, Jan. 6, 171)6, in the sixty-ninth year of his age, was a member of several learned societies, and owed much of his reputation to a work he published in German, called “An Inquiry into the doctrine respecting the salvation of Heathens,” or “The New apology for Socrates,” which was translated from German into French by Dumas, and published at Amsterdam in 1773, 8vo. It contains also a defence of Marmontel’s “Belisarius,” which at that time had occasioned a controversy in Holland and Germany. Eberhard had among his countrymen the reputation of a man who was a powerful advocate for revealed religion in its original simplicity. ²