Honert, Johann Van Den

Honert, Johann Van Den A distinguished Dutch divine, was born near Dortrecht Dec. 1,1693. His early years were spent in military service, but on his father's accession to a professor's chair in the University of Leyden he decided to follow a literary life, and, after four years of study, he became a candidate for the ministry in his twenty-fourth year. In 1718 he was appointed minister at Catwick, on the Rhine; later, at Enkhuysen, and then at Haarlem. In 1727 he was called as professor of theology to the University at Utrecht, and in 1731 was honored with the professorship of Church History. In 1734 the University of Leyden called him as professor of theology, to which was added, in 1738, the department, which he last filled at the Utrecht University, and in 1746 the department of Homiletics. He died April 7, 1758. A complete list of his works, which in a great part have now nearly gone out of date, is given by Adelung (in Jöcher's Gel. Lexik. Addenda 2, 2123 sq.). His De gratia Dei non universali, sed particulari (Lugd. 1723, 8vo), which was intended to serve as al intermediator at the time when the Calvinistic predestinarian doctrine was much softened by the French and Swiss theologians, so rigidly opposed by many systematic theologians, involved him in a controversy with some of the Remonstrants (q.v.). (Comp. Aeta hist. eccl. 2, 819 sq.) His Oratio de hist. eccles. studio

Theologis maxime necess. (Lugd. 1734, 4to) was, like many other translations of German theological works, of great value to the Church of his country. He wrote also Instit. Theol. (Lugd. 1735). Honert was regarded by all parties as a very scholarly divine, and was consulted by all of them without distinction. — Gass, Gesch. der Protest. Dogmat. 3, 1862; Fuhrmann, Handwörterb. d. Kirchengesch. 2, 339 sq. (J. H.W.)