CAPPEL or CAPPELLUS, Louts (Ltmovi cus), was born at St. Helier, 1585. He was the son of Jacques Cappel II. He lived for the most part in Sedan from his eighth till his twentieth year. At the age of 24 the church in Bourdeaux furnished him with the means of travelling abroad for four years through Great Britain, Belgium, and Germany. At Oxford he studied two years. After his return, he was elected professor of Hebrew in the Academy of Saumur, 1613 ; and two years after he became a preacher there. In 1633 he be• came professor of theology in Saumur to the Re formed Synod. Here he laboured till his death, which took place on ISth June 1658. Cappel was a very learned and many-sided theologian, who possessed a spirit of independent inquiry, and freely gave the results of it to the public without fear. The leading subject of his researches was the his tory of the Old Testament text. His principal works are, Arcanum punctationir revelatum, first published by Erpenius anonymously, Leyden, 1624, 4to. In this work it is proved that the Hebrew points were not of divine origin, but were the in vention of Jewish critics after the completion of the Babylonian Talmud. Another important work
which he wrote is his Critica sacra, shelving that the Masoretic text is faulty in many respects. In consequence of the difficulty and danger attending the promulgation of the views advocated, it was not published till 1650 at Paris, sixteen years after it had been written. He is also the author of Dia triba de vents et antiquis Hebroarum literis, Am sterdam, 1645, 12mo, written against a treatise of the junior Buxtorf's. He wrote besides, Templi Hierosolymitani delineatio triplex; and Chranalogia Sacra, printed in the prolegomena of the London Polyglott ; Historia apostalica illustrata, Geneva, 1634. In 1689 his son Jacques published L. Cap pelli canzmentaril et notes tritium in Vet. Test. This contains his Vina'aza Arcani punctatianis against Buxtorf, the son. The views so ably propounded and maintained by Cappel respecting the Hebrew text are now generally received. Several of his works are still in MS.—S. D.