Edward Stillingfleet, an English Protestant theologian, was born in Cranborne, Dorset. He entered St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1649. On graduating in 1653 he was elected a college fellow, but after a year went into private employment. He was appointed rector of Sutton, Bedfordshire, in 1657. The Church of England was then under Presbyterian administration, but Stillingfleet received episcopal ordination in a clandestine ceremony and readily conformed after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. A popular preacher in London legal circles, he became rector of St. Andrew's, Holborn, London, in 1665, and in 1678 rose to be dean of St. Paul's. On the accession of William III (1650–1702) in 1689 Stillingfleet was created bishop of Worcester. He was active in the politico-theological controversies of the time, most of which had a philosophical dimension. None of his writings was narrowly or exclusively philosophical.

His first work was Irenicum (1659). Though ostensibly an attempt...