Ernesti, Johann August, a celebrated German classicist and theologian, called the “German Cicero,” born at Tennstädt, Thüringia; professor of Philology in Leipzig, and afterwards of Theology; edited various classical works, his edition of Cicero specially noted; was the first to apply impartial textual criticism to the Bible, and to him, in consequence, we owe the application of a more correct exegesis to the biblical writings (1707‒1781).
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Erminia * Ernst, Elector of Saxony