Alsted, Johann Heinrich

Alsted, Johann Heinrich a German Protestant divine, born in 1588 at Herborn, in Nassau, professor of philosophy and theology in his native town, and subsequently at Weissembourg, in Transylvania, where he died in 1638. He represented the Reformed Church of Nassau at the Synod of Dort. Among his numerous works may be mentioned, Tractatus de Mille Annis (1618; a treatise on the Millennium, translated and published in London in 1643, 4to); Encyclopoedia Biblica (Francof. 1620, 1642), in which he attempts to prove that the principles and materials of all the arts and sciences should be sought for in the Scriptures. He wrote also a general Encyclopoedia (Lyons, 1649, 4 vols. fol.), and other works, of which a list may be found in Niceron, Memoires, t. 41.