Lubin, Eilhard

, one of the most learned protestants of his time, was born at Westersted, in the county of Oldenburg, March 24, 1556, of which place his father was minister, who sent him first to Leipsic, where he prosecuted his studies with great success, and for further improvement went thence to Cologne. After this he visited the several universities of Helmstadt, Strasburg, Jena, Marpurg, and, last of all, Rostock, where he was made professor of poetry in 1595. Having there read lectures with great applause for ten years, he was advanced to the divinity chair in the same university, in 1605. In 1620 he was seized with a tertian ague, under which he laboured for ten months before it put a period to his life in June 162 1. He has the character of having been a good Greek scholar, and was well skilled in the Latin language, in which he made good verses, and he had much reputation as an orator, a mathematician, and a divine. He published several books, namely, 1. “Antiquarius, sive priscorum et minus usitatorum vocabulorum brevis et dilucida interpretatio.” 2. “Clavis Graecae linguae.” 3. “Anacreon, Juvenal, and Persius, with notes.” 4. “Horace and Juvenal, with a paraphrase.” 5. “The Anthologia, with a Latin version,” 1604, 4to. 6. “Epistolae veterum Grsecorum, Greece et Latine, cum methodo conscribendarum epistolarum.” 7. “Commentaiies upon some of the Epistles of St. Paul.” 8. “Monotessaion,sive historia evangelica,” &c. &c. i. e. a harmony of the four Evangelists. 9. “Nonni Dionysiaca,” in Greek and Latin, at Francfort, 1605, 8vo. 10. “Latin Poems,” inserted in the third volume of “Deliciae ^oetarum Germanorum.”

But that which attracted most attention, though not very deservedly, was his, 11. “Phosphorus, de prima causa et natura mali, tractatus hypermetaphysicus,” &c. printed at Rostock in 1596, and reprinted there in 8vo and 12mo, in 1600. “Phosphorus; or an hypermetaphysical treatise concerning the origin and nature of Sin.” In this piece he established two co-eternal principles (not matter and a vacuum, or void, as Epicurus did, but) God and the nihilum, or nothing. God, he supposed, is the good principle, and nothing the evil principle. He added, that sin was nothing | else but a tendency towards nothing; and that sin had been necessary in order to make known the nature of good; and he applied to this nothing all that Aristotle says of the first matter. This being answered by Grawer in his “AntiLubinus,” in 1608, 4to, the author published a reply, entitled, 12. “Apologeticus quo Alb. Graw. calumniis respondetur, &c.” printed at Rostock, and reprinted there in 1605. To this also Grawer published an answer, in an appendix to his “Anti-Lubinus.” Lubin likewise published the next year, 13. “Tractatus de causa peccati, ad theologos Augustinae confessionis in Germania.” But, notwithstanding all these works, posterity has justly considered him as better acquainted with polite literature than with divinity. ¹