Ragstatt, Frederic

Ragstatt, Frederic of Weile, a minister of the Reformed Church, was born, of Jewish parents, at Metz in 1648. In the year 1671 he was baptized at Cleves in the faith of the Reformed Church; and his conversion and public confession of the divine truths of Christianity were not less remarkable. Shortly after his baptism, when scarcely twenty-three years of age, he published a Latin apology: Theatrum Lucidumn, exhibens Verum Messiam, Dominus nostrum Jesum Christum, ejusque Honorem Defendens contra Accusationes Judorum seu Rabbinorum in Genere, speciatir R. Lipmanni Nizzachon (Amst. 1671), in which the name of the Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ, was gloriously maintained against the abominable Nizzachon of the famous Rabbi Lipmann (q.v.). Having studied at Groningen and Leyden, in 1680 he was called to the pastorate at Spyk, near Gorcum, in South Holland, where he labored with great blessing, bringing many of his former coreligionists to the foot of the cross. Besides his Theatrum, he published some other writings. See First, Bibl. Judaica, iii, 128 sq.; Jicher, Gelehrten-Lexikon, s.v. "Von Weile;" Wolf, Biblioth. Hebr. I, iii, 4 (Nuremb. 1850); Bayle, Dictionnaire, s.v.; Kalkar, Israel u. die Kirche, p. 63 sq.; Delitzsch, Wissenschaft, Kunst u. Judenthum, p. 138; Da Costa, Israel and the Gentiles, p. 561 sq. (B. P.)