Alberti, Valentine

, professor of divinity at Leipsic, was born in 1635, at Lehna in Silesia, and died at Leipsic in 1697. He wrote a great many controversial treatises against Puffendorf, Thomasius, the Cartesians, Cocceians, and the adversaries of the Augsburgh | communion, especially Bossuet and count Leopold de Collonitsch, bishop of Wienerisch-Nenstadt. Alberti attacked also the orthodoxy of the pious Spener, the Fenelon of the Lutheran church, but who has been censured for his leaning too ranch to the pietists and mystics. Among his writings, which have been most favourably received and frequently reprinted, we may notice his “Compendium Juris naturae,” against Puffendorff, and his “Interesse prsecipuarum religionum Christian.” He also wrote two curious dissertations, “De fide hsereticis servanda,” Leipsic, 1662, 4to. Adelung, who has given a list of his works, says that his German poems are not bad, if we consider the imperfections of that language, and the false taste which prevailed in his time. ¹