Stillingfleet, Edward

Stillingfleet, Edward, 1635–99, English prelate and author. A fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, he became (1657) rector of Sutton, Bedfordshire. In 1661 he published Irenicum, a treatise on church government that sought to establish a compromise between episcopacy and the Presbyterian polity. In 1663 he issued Origines Sacrae and in 1664 A Rational Account of the Grounds of the Protestant Religion. In 1677 he became archdeacon of London and in 1678 dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, London. He was consecrated (1689) bishop of Worcester. Among his later works are Origines Britannicae; or, Antiquities of the British Church (1685) and The Bishop of Worcester's Answer to Mr. Locke's Letter (1697), in which he criticized John Locke for undermining the Trinity. An edition of his works, with a life by Richard Bentley, was published in six volumes in 1710.