Lubin, Eilhard

Lubin, Eilhard one of the most learned Protestants of his time, was born at Westersted, in Oldenburg, March 24,1556, of which place his father was minister. He was educated first at 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, and ten years later was advanced to the divinity chair in the same university. He died in June 1621. One of his works deserves special mention, Phosphorus de prima causa et natura mali, tractatus hypermetaphysicus, etc. (Rostock, 1596, and 8vo and 12mo in 1600), in which he established two coeternal 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 the applied to this nothing all that Aristotle says of the first matter. He was answered by Grawer, but published a reply entitled Apologeticus quo Alb. Graw. calumnniis respond., etc. (Rostock, 1605). He likewise published the next year, Tractatus de causa peccati, ad theologos Augustinea confessionis in Gernmaniai. See Gen. Biog. Dict. s.v.; Bayle, Hist. Dict. s.v.