Johann Lorenz von Mosheim

[1] His first appearance in the field of literature was in a polemical tract against John Toland, Vindiciae antiquae christianorum disciplinae (1720), which was soon followed by a volume of Observationes sacrae (1721).

[1] Mosheim was much consulted by the authorities when the new University of Göttingen was being formed, especially in the framing of the statutes of the theological faculty, and the provisions in the process of making the theologians independent of the ecclesiastical courts.

Among his other works were De rebus christianorum ante Constantinum commentarii (1753), Ketzer-Geschichte (2nd edition 1748), and Sittenlehre der heiligen Schrift (1737).

In his sermons (Heilige Reden) considerable eloquence is shown, and a mastery of style which justifies the position he held as president of the German Society.

[1] Maclaine's translation, the Institutes were retitled An Ecclesiastical History: Ancient and Modern, from the Birth of Christ to the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century: in which The Rise, Progress And Variation of Church Power Are Considered In Their Connection With the State Of Learning And Philosophy, and The Political History of Europe During that Period, and Mosheim's name was Anglicized as "John Lawrence Mosheim, D.D., Chancellor of the University of Göttingen.” His Ecclesiastical History provided a crucial source for Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and Gibbon borrowed many of Mosheim's arguments.