JOHANN LORENZ VON, a celebrated ecclesiastical historian, was descended from a noble family, and was born at Lübeck in October 1694. He was educated in the Protestant religion; and from the gymnasium of his native place he was sent to study divinity at the university of Kiel. There, when he had scarcely attained the age of manhood, he was appointed to succeed Albert zum Felde as professor and first pastor. In this double office his talents found full scope. His lectures were pervaded by great erudition, controlled by delicate ingenuity and penetrating sagacity. He appeared to especial advantage in the pulpit. The style of his sermons, formed on the models of the great English and French preachers, was chaste, lucid, and graceful, and burned with a fervid and eloquent piety. Ere four years had passed, Mosheim had become famous in other countries, and was besieged with offers of preferment from several governments. Accepting the invitation of the Duke of Brunswick, he removed to the chair of theology at Helmstedt in 1723. Here, during the next four-and-twenty years, his fame continued steadily to increase. His eloquence, the moral graces of his character, and his skill in tuition, rendered him the favourite professor of the university. The publication of his Institutionum Historiae Ecclesiasticae libri ii., in 2 vols. 12mo, 1726, and of numerous other works, extended his celebrity. The Duke of Brunswick appointed him Abbot of Marienthal and Michaelstein, and inspector-general of the schools in the duchy of Wolfenbüttel, and in the principality of Blankenburg. From foreign princes, and from several learned societies, he also received marks of distinction. All this eminence only served to bring into greater prominence his affable bearing, the gentle amiability of his disposition, and his consistent Christian practice. In 1747 Mosheim was promoted by George II. of Great Britain to the theological chair and the chancellorship of the university of Göttingen. His health was now beginning to yield under the intensity of his mental activity. Yet he continued to study, and to lecture on theology, for three hours every day, to audiences composed of men of every class and vocation. At length, worn out with labour, he died in September 1755. In the same year was published a new and enlarged edition of his Institutes. This work was translated into German by Von Einem and by J. R. Schlegel. There are two English versions,—that of Dr Maclean, published in 1764; and that of Dr Murdock, published in 1832. The latter, which is by far the more correct, was revised and re-edited by Dr James Seaton Reid in 1848. The Institutes of Mosheim introduced a new era in the writing of ecclesiastical history. He MOSKONISI was among the first to separate historical facts from the rubbish among which they had been usually exhibited,—to refer to the characteristics of each separate age,—to trace clearly the mutual reaction between civil and ecclesiastical affairs,—and to use care and candour in narrating the controversies and broils of different sects. Yet his division of events into those external and those internal, and into those prosperous and those calamitous, is thoroughly contradictory to the true character of history. He also suffers the dignified neutrality of the historian to suppress completely that expression of sympathy with the good and the true which ought to be shown by every writer. The other work of Mosheim which is well known in this country is his *De Rebus Christianorum ante Constantium Magnum Commentarii*, 4to, Helmstädt, 1753. An English translation of this treatise, begun in 1813, by R. S. Vidal, was completed and edited by Dr Murdock, in 2 vols. 8vo, New York, 1851.