GetWiki

{{Short description|British Christian theologian and scholar (1635–1699)}}{{for|his son, the English physician and clergyman|Edward Stillingfleet (physician)}}{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2020}} Edward Stillingfleet (17 April 1635 – 27 March 1699) was a British Christian theologian and scholar. Considered an outstanding preacher as well as a strong polemical writer defending Anglicanism, Stillingfleet was known as “the beauty of holiness” for his good looks in the pulpit,EB1911, Sermon, 24, 674, and was called by John Hough “the ablest man of his time”.David C. Douglas, English Scholars (1939), p. 254.

Life

Edward Stillingfleet was born at Cranborne, Dorset, seventh son of Samuel Stillingfleet (d. 1661), of Cranborne Lodge, Dorset, a member of a landowning family originally of Yorkshire, and his wife Susanna, daughter of Edward Norris, of Petworth, West Sussex.ODNB,www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-26526, Stillingfleet, Edward (1635–1699), bishop of Worcester and theologian, 2004, 10.1093/ref:odnb/26526, Till, Barry, Burke’s Family Index, ed. Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd, Burke’s Peerage Ltd, 1976, p. 179A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland for 1852, vol. II, P-Z, J. Bernard Burke, Colburn & Co. Publishers, 1852, p. 1306-1307 He went at the age of thirteen to St John’s College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1652,{{acad|id=STLT648E|name=Stillingfleet, Edward}} and became vicar of Sutton, Bedfordshire in 1657.EB1911, 1911b, Stillingfleet, Edward, 25, 921, In 1665, after he had made his name as a writer, Stillingfleet became vicar at St Andrew, Holborn. He preached at St Margaret, Westminster on 10 October 1666, the ‘day of humiliation and fasting’ after the Great Fire of London, with such an attendance that there was standing room only. Samuel Pepys recorded that he could not get in to hear the sermon, eating a meal of herrings in a pub instead.Adrian Tinniswood, By Permission of Heaven: The Story of the Great Fire of London (2003), p. 181.Stillingfleet then held many preferments, including a Royal Chaplaincy, and the Deanery of St Paul’s (1678), the latter involving him in work connected with the building of the new St Paul’s Cathedral. He became Bishop of Worcester in 1689. He was a frequent speaker in the House of Lords, and had considerable influence as a churchman.He supported Richard Bentley, who lived in his household as a tutor for a number of years, from shortly after his graduation in 1693. Bentley would later be his chaplain and biographer, and describe him as “one of the most universal scholars that ever lived”.EB1911, Bentley, Richard (scholar), Bentley, Richard, 3, 750,www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45118 british-history.ac.ukIn 1691, at Stillingfleet’s request, Queen Mary II wrote to the magistrates of Middlesex, asking for stronger enforcement of the laws against vice. This was an early move in the campaign of the Society for the Reformation of Manners.Deborah Payne Fisk, The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre (20000, p. 212.At his death Stillingfleet left a library of some 10,000 printed books, which were purchased by Narcissus Marsh and today are part of Marsh’s Library in Dublin, Ireland. His manuscript collection was purchased by Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer (1661–1724), and passed with the Harleian Manuscripts to the British Museum in 1753 as one of the foundation collections.

Patronage, politics and views

Stillingfleet had to wait many years for a bishopric, a fact linked to his disfavour at Court in the 1680s. He never, though, lacked for well-connected patrons. The first was Sir Roger Burgoyne, 2nd Baronet, a barrister and MP in the Long Parliament, in whose gift was Sutton, Bedfordshire, his living; followed by Francis Pierrepont, a Parliamentarian colonel and younger brother of Henry Pierrepont, 1st Marquess of Dorchester (a Royalist) and William Pierrepont (like Francis a Parliamentarian). These both offered him tutoring positions. He was also supported by Harbottle Grimstone, who as Master of the Rolls gave him a preaching position in the Rolls Chapel.John Trevor Cliffe, The Puritan Gentry Besieged, 1650-1700 (1993), p. 40.The transition at the Restoration was certainly problematic. Earl of Southampton presented Stillingfleet to St Andrew, Holborn. Humphrey Henchman, Bishop of London, employed him to write a vindication of William Laud’s answer to John Percy (alias Fisher). According to Jon Parkin,{{cquote|The apparent ease with which younger writers like Stillingfleet squared their allegiance to the restored regime, coupled with their espousal of a naturalistic, erastian and apparently Hobbesian ecclesiology, earned them the description of ‘men of latitude’.}}Stillingfleet was a leader within the Church of England of the “latitudinarians”, the group of Anglicans thus defined pejoratively. Latitudinarism as doctrine was considered to have grown from the teaching of the Cambridge Platonists, but in practical terms conditions at the Restoration did not favour it. Quite a number of its Cambridge adherents left an unpromising career in religion for the law, or had to rely for patronage on those who had done so.Parkin, p. 27.Stillingfleet was most closely associated, in his attitudes, with such as Isaac Barrow, Robert South and John Tillotson. They agreed, for example, on a literal interpretation to Biblical exegesis, discarding allegorical readings.B. W. Young, Religion and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century England: Theological Debate from Locke to Burke (1998), p. 190. With Tillotson he favoured the so-called Erastian view, that the ruler had great powers over the Church, from the days of 1660; after the Glorious Revolution they became Low Church moderates.Tony Claydon, Europe and the Making of England, 1660-1760 (2007), p. 330. With Gilbert Burnet, Benjamin Hoadly, Simon Patrick, William Powell and William Whiston, he held some High Church views also.William Gibson, Altitudinarian Equivocation: George Smalridge’s Churchmanship, p. 57 in William Gibson, Robert G. Ingram (editors), Religious Identities in Britain, 1660-1832 (2005).With Thomas Tenison, Stillingfleet and Tillotson preached on behalf of reason and natural religion. They are described as influential Arminian Anglicans.{{sfn|Coffey|2006|p=227|ps=. Besides Sancroft, there were other young men at Cambridge in the early 1650s who were to become influential Arminian Anglicans: Isaac Barrow [...], John Tillotson [...], Simon Patrick [...], Edward Stillingfleet [...], Richard Kidder [...], Thomas Tenison. [...] The most important influences on them were clearly the Cambridge Platonists, and the Anglican Arminian, Henry Hammond. But Redemption Redeemed may have helped to confirm their rejection of Calvinism.}} They adopted an Arminian scheme of justification in opposition to the Calvinist’s one, and took the stock of core beliefs to be a small set of fundamentals.{{sfn|Griffin|1992|loc=Introduction|p=7}} In Stillingfleet’s case, it supported reconciliation with Presbyterians. Stillingfleet and Tillotson{{cquote|...stood for an attitude and a temper rather than for any particular creed. Though they did not abandon the objective side of religion, their emphasis was primarily on a proper moral outlook of life. They tried to meet what they believed were the greatest intellectual and ethical needs of their generation, and, in so doing, they contributed to the changing character of theology from being dogmatic to being rationalistic.WEB,www.anglicanbooksrevitalized.us/Peter_Toons_Books_Online/History/hypercal1.htm,www.anglicanbooksrevitalized.us/Peter_Toons_Books_Online/History/hypercal1.htm," title="web.archive.org/web/20090226001003www.anglicanbooksrevitalized.us/Peter_Toons_Books_Online/History/hypercal1.htm,">web.archive.org/web/20090226001003www.anglicanbooksrevitalized.us/Peter_Toons_Books_Online/History/hypercal1.htm, dead, anglicanbooksrevitalized.us, 26 February 2009, 15 August 2019, }}In 1674 they met with Richard Baxter and Thomas Manton, in an attempt to draft a reconciliation with the nonconformists.WEB,www.newblehome.co.uk/manton/mantonbiog.html, newblehome.co.uk, 16 January 2009, 18 December 2008,www.newblehome.co.uk/manton/mantonbiog.html," title="web.archive.org/web/20081218090906www.newblehome.co.uk/manton/mantonbiog.html,">web.archive.org/web/20081218090906www.newblehome.co.uk/manton/mantonbiog.html, dead, They were largely sympathetic with the new science of their times.WEB,www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/cambs/vol3/pp210-235, The University of Cambridge: The age of Newton and Bentley (1660-1800) | British History Online, www.british-history.ac.uk, 15 August 2019, Stillingfleet did draw the line at the materialist tendency in the views of Edmond Halley, whom he examined with the help of Richard Bentley in 1691, when Halley applied for the Savilian Chair of Astronomy.Andrew Pyle (editor), Dictionary of Seventeenth Century British Philosophers (2000), article Halley, Edmond, pp. 376-9.

Works

A keen controversialist, he wrote many treatises, with a general but learned concern to defend Anglican orthodoxy.

Doctrine and the Church

His first book was The IrenicumWEB,books.google.com/books?id=lVAXAAAAYAAJ&q=Irenicum, Irenicum: A Weapon Salve for the Church’s Wounds; Or, The Divine Right of Particular Forms of Church Government, Discussed and Examined According to the Principles of the Law of Nature, the Positive Laws of God, the Practice of the Apostles, and the Primitive Church, and the Judgment of Reformed Divines. Whereby a Foundation is Laid for the Church’s Peace, and the Accommodation of Our Present Differences ..., Edward, Stillingfleet, 15 August 1842, M. Sorin, 15 August 2019, Google Books, (1659) advocating compromise with the Presbyterians; following a Latitudinarian approach, he there shows the influence of John Selden and takes a close interest in the synagogue as a model of church structure.James E. Force, Richard Henry Popkin (editors), Newton and Religion: Context, Nature, and Influence (1999), p. 157. The philosophical basis was natural law and the state of nature. The arguments of the Irenicum were still live in the 1680s, when Gilbert Rule produced a Modest Answer.John Robertson, A Union for Empire: Political Thought and the British Union of 1707 (1995), p. 160.It was followed by Origines Sacrae, Or, A Rational Account of the Grounds of Christian Faith, as to the Truth and Divine Authority of the Scriptures, and Matters Therein ContainedWEB,books.google.com/books?id=YGD3Cq598bIC, Origines Sacrae, Or, A Rational Account of the Grounds of Christian Faith, as to the Truth and Divine Authority of the Scriptures, and Matters Therein Contained, Edward, Stillingfleet, 15 August 1666, R.W., 15 August 2019, Google Books, (1662) and A Rational Account of the Grounds of Protestant ReligionWEB,books.google.com/books?id=2sc8AQAAIAAJ, A Rational Account of the Grounds of Protestant Religion: Being a Vindication of the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury’s Relation of a Conference Etc. from the Pretended Answer by T.C., Wherein the True Grounds of Faith are Cleared and the False Discovered, the Church of England Vindicated from the Imputation of Schism, and the Most Important Particular Controversies Between Us and Those of the Church of Rome Thoroughly Examined, 15 August 1844, University Press, 15 August 2019, Google Books, (1664). It included an attack on Catholicism, and Edward Meredith replied on the Catholic side. A Discourse Concerning the Idolatry Practised in the Church of RomeWEB,books.google.com/books?id=87oPhxj2WN4C, A Discourse Concerning the Idolatry Practised in the Church of Rome 2nd Ed, Edward, Stillingfleet, 15 August 1672, Robert While, 15 August 2019, Google Books, (1671) formed part of a controversy with the recusant Catholic Thomas GoddenCostas Douzinas, Lynda Nead, eds., Law and the Image: The Authority of Art and the Aesthetics of Law (1999), p. 109. and noted Church scholar Serenus de Cressy.{{sfn|Cressy|1672}}The Mischief of SeparationWEB,books.google.com/books?id=dC9cAAAAQAAJ&q=%22The+Mischief+of+Separation%22, The Mischief of Separation: A Sermon Preach’d at Guild-Hall Chappel, May II. MDCLXXX. Being the First Sunday in Easter-term, Before the Lord-Mayor, &c, Edward, Stillingfleet, 15 August 1709, H. Hills, 15 August 2019, Google Books, (1687) originally a sermon, was followed up by The Unreasonableness of Separation: Or, An Impartial Account of the History, Nature and Pleas of the Present Separation from the Communion of the Church of EnglandWEB,books.google.com/books?id=VXM9AQAAMAAJ, The Unreasonableness of Separation: Or, An Impartial Account of the History, Nature, and Pleas of the Present Separation from the Communion of the Church of England. To Which, Several Late Letters are Annexed, of Eminent Protestant Divines Abroad, Concerning the Nature of Our Differences, and the Way to Compose Them, Edward, Stillingfleet, 15 August 1681, T.N., 15 August 2019, Google Books, (1680). These attacks on the separatists among non-conformists prompted a large-scale response from dissenters, many of whom were disappointed with the harsher line from an Anglican who had in the past held out an olive branch.John Marshall, John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (1994), p. 95. His opponents included Richard BaxterRichard Baxter’s Answer to Dr Edward Stillingfleet’s charge of separation (1680) and John Owen.WEB,www.tecmalta.org/tft349.htm, John Owen: His Life and Literary Legacy, www.tecmalta.org, 15 August 2019, John Howe took the line that “latitude” was not compatible with a “mean narrow” approach.Richard Ashcraft, Latitudinarianism and Toleration, p. 159 in Richard W. F. Kroll, Richard Ashcraft, Perez Zagorin (editors), Philosophy, Science, and Religion in England, 1640-1700 (1991). Stillingfleet was also criticised from the conforming side, for coming too close to the arguments of Thomas Hobbes.Tony Claydon, Europe and the Making of England, 1660-1760 (2007), p. 298. An Answer to Some PapersBOOK,quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A61526.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext, An answer to some papers lately printed concerning the authority of the Catholick Church in matters of faith, and the reformation of the Church of England, quod.lib.umich.edu, (1685) attempted to deal with the embarrassing publication of papers, allegedly written by the King, Charles II, arguing that one true church was that of Roman Catholicism. In the ensuing controversy, he issued A Vindication of the Answer to some Late PapersWEB,books.google.com/books?id=sV49AQAAMAAJ&q=A+Vindication+of+the+Answer+to+some+Late+Papers, A Vindication of the Answer to Some Late Papers Concerning the Unity and Authority of the Catholic Church .., Edward, Stillingfleet, 15 August 1687, Richard Chiswell, 15 August 2019, Google Books, (1687) attacking John Dryden, whom he called a “grim logician”. Dryden retaliated, and incorporated the “grim logician” phrase as self-description in his poem The Hind and the Panther (1687), which alludes to Stillingfleet.weblink{{Dead link|August 2011|date=August 2011}}

Philosophical controversy

A Letter to a Deist (1677) was the first prolonged attack on deism to appear in English.A Letter to a DeistEB1911, 1911c, Deism, 7, 933, It also engaged with the thought of Baruch Spinoza, in Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, though he was named only as a “late author mightily in vogue”.Jonathan Israel, The Radical Enlightenment (2001), p. 603.In 1697, Stillingfleet issued A Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the TrinityWEB,quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A61548.0001.001?view=toc, A Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity, Edward, Stillingfleet, 15 August 1697, 15 August 2019, (1697){{cquote|Stillingfleet’s Vindication stands out among the many polemical works of the 1690s by virtue of its eirenical tone, and the breadth of learning displayed marks it off as a minor classic of seventeenth-century theology.Philip Dixon, Nice and Hot Disputes: The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Seventeenth Century (2005), pp. 143–4.}}It had three intentions: repelling the Unitarians, shoring up the unity of the orthodox trinitarians, and doctrinal defence of the Trinity. Under the third heading, Stillingfleet took on John Locke, and his Essay on Human Understanding. He wrote Three Criticisms of LockeBOOK,books.google.com/books?id=xAbkaNTvO3oC, Three Criticisms of Locke, Edward, Stillingfleet, Georg Olms Verlag, 9783487409573, 15 August 2019, Google Books, (1697)Stillingfleet engaged in a debate through correspondence (later published) with Locke. He argued in favor of dualism, and claimed that Locke’s Essay argued against dualism as he understood it. He also considered that the epistemology of the Essay opened the door to Unitarianism.John Marshall, Locke, Socinianism, “Socinianism”, and Unitarianism, p. 111 in M. A. Stewart (editor), English Philosophy in the Age of Locke (2000), Locke himself had taken an interest in Stillingfleet (with James Tyrrell and Sylvester Brounower) from 1681.libraries.psu.eduThe controversy drew in the playwright Catherine Cockburn, who wrote in defence of Locke, but to the detriment of her career as author.Richard H. Popkin, The Pimlico History of Western Philosophy (1999), p. 768.

Antiquarian scholarship

Origines Sacrae (1663) began with a comprehensive analysis of flaws in ancient historians, as a way of defending the account in the Book of Genesis.Margaret T. Hodgen, Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1971 edition), pp. 248-9. It argued against the Pre-Adamite theories of Isaac La Peyrère, and took a very critical line with the older theories of ancient British origins, and the writings of Annius of Viterbo.Colin Kidd, British Identities Before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600-1800 (1999), p.40 and p. 59.Another work going back to the roots was Origines Britannicae: Or, The Antiquities of the British Churches (1685).WEB,books.google.com/books?id=Fj07AQAAMAAJ, Origines Britannicæ [i.e., Britannicae], Or, The Antiquities of the British Churches: With a Preface Concerning Some Pretended Antiquities Relating to Britain, in Vindication of the Bishop of St. Asaph, Edward, Stillingfleet, 15 August 1685, M. Flesher, 15 August 2019, Google Books, The Discourse of the True Antiquity of London appeared in 1704 bundled with The Second Part of Ecclesiastical Cases.WEB,books.google.com/books?id=I3JbAAAAQAAJ, The Second Part of Ecclesiastical Cases, Relating to the Exercise of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction as Far as it is Allowed by Law: To which are Added Two Speeches in the House of Lords. I. The Case of Exeter College in Oxford. II. The Case of Commendams. With a Discourse of the True Antiquity of London, and Its State in the Roman Times, Edward, Stillingfleet, 15 August 1704, Henry Mortlock, at the PhÅ“nix in S. Paul’s Church Yard, 15 August 2019, Google Books, It was a work of high scholarship on Roman London; it however ignored the new archaeological evidence that was available but not yet in literary form.Joseph M. Levine, Dr. Woodward’s Shield: History, Science and Satire in Augustan England (1977), pp. 136-7.

Notes and references

Citations

{{Reflist|30em}}

Sources

• BOOK, en, Coffey, John, John Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution : Religion and Intellectual Change in Seventeenth-Century England, Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 2006,
• BOOK, en, Cressy, Hugh Paulinus, Fanaticism fanatically imputed to the Catholick church by Doctour Stillingfleet: and the imputation refuted and retorted by S.C. a Catholick, Douai, English College, 1672,
• BOOK, en, Griffin, Martin Ignatius Joseph, Latitudinarianism in the Seventeenth-Century Church of England, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1992,

Further reading

By Stillingfleet not listed above

• The Doctrines and Practices of the Church of Rome Truly Represented; in Answer to a Book Intituled, a Papist Misrepresented, and Represented, &c (1686)
• Fifty Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions (1707)
• Several Conferences Between a Romish Priest, a Fanatick Chaplain, and a Divine of the Church of England Concerning the Idolatry of the Church of Rome (1710)

About Stillingfleet

• Timothy Goodwin, The Works of the Eminent and Most Learned Prelate Dr. Edw. Stillingfleet, Late Lord Bishop of Worcester: Together with His Life and Character (1710)
• Timothy Goodwin, The Life and Character of that Eminent and Learned Prelate, Dr. Edward Stillingfleet, Lord Bishop of Worster (1735)
• Robert Todd Carroll, The Common-Sense Philosophy of Religion of Bishop Edward Stillingfleet, 1635-1699 (1975), {{ISBN|90-247-1647-0}}. (1974 doctoral dissertation, under the direction of Richard Popkin, University of California at San Diego)

External links

{{commons category-inline}}

• Edward Stillingfleet papers, 1660-1695 at Pitts Theology Library, Candler School of Theology
• British Library Illuminated Manuscripts, Foundation Collections {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191002104240www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/TourCollFound.asp |date=2 October 2019 }}
• {{BBKL|s/s4/stillingfleet_e|band=10|autor= Günther Thomann|spalten=1464-1468}}

{{St Paul’s Cathedral}}{{Bishops of Worcester}}{{Authority control}}