MESTREZAT, mes"tre"wI', JEAN: French Reformed; b. in Geneva 1592; d. in Paris May 2, 1657. He studied in Saumur, then accepted a call from the church at Charenton, and remained there till his death. He was a learned theologian, a distinguished preacher, and one of the main supports of the French Reformed Church in the seventeenth century. He was active in its synods, in its disputations with the Jesuits, and in its negotiations with the court. He published many sermons, which are interesting to the historian of the Reformed preaching because of their expository character (e.g., Exposition de l'epitre aux Hebreux, 5 parts, Geneva, 1653-55). His other writings are polemical; a treatise, De la communion h Jesu Christ au sacrement de l'eucharistie (Sedan, 1624), was translated into German (Frankfort, 1624), English (1631), and Italian (Geneva, 1638).
Bibliography: Andrd, Essai sur les amvres de J. Mestrezat, Strasburg, 1847; A. Archimard, in Mémoires et documents, xv. 29-72, published by the Society of History, Geneva; Lichtenberger, ESR, ix. 113-121.
The mountains of Palestine show strata of the
Upper Cretaceous formation, older deposits occur
only sporadically, and the coast plains and valley
of the Jordan contain fluvial deposits; all these
formations are notably poor in metals. The reference in the latter part of
also speaks of" iron from the north." On the other
hand the mines which so strongly impress the poetical Job should be sought in the Sinaitic peninsula
or in Nubia. At all events the Israelites for
the
most part derived their metals from the neighboring peoples, but they soon learned the art of working them. It was known that the ores must be
cleansed of their impure ingredients, a result mainly
achieved by the smelting-process. In order to accelerate the separation of metals in fusion, they
added some such vegetable alkaline salt
(beir)
as
the carbonate of potash obtained from wood ashes,
or a mineral alkaline salt
(nete;
cf.
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