Stewart, Dugald See SCOTTISH COMMON SENSE PHI-. LOSOPH. Stillingfleet, Edward (1635–99), English divine and controversialist who first made his name with Irenicum (1659), using natural-law doctrines to oppose religious sectarianism. His Origines Sacrae (1662), ostensibly on the superiority of the Scriptural record over other forms of ancient history, was for its day a learned study in the moral certainty of historical evidence, the authority of testimony, and the credibility of miracles. In drawing eclectically on philosophy from antiquity to the Cambridge Platonists, he was much influenced by the Cartesian theory of ideas, but later repudiated Cartesianism for its mechanist tendency. For three decades he pamphleteered on behalf of the moral certainty of orthodox Protestant belief against what he considered the beliefs ‘contrary to reason’ of Roman Catholicism. This led to controversy with Unitarian and deist writers who argued that mysteries like the Trinity were equally contrary to ‘clear and distinct’ ideas. He was alarmed at the use made of Locke’s ‘new,’ i.e. non- Cartesian, way of ideas by John Toland in Christianity not Mysterious (1696), and devoted his last years to challenging Locke to prove his orthodoxy. The debate was largely over the concepts of substance, essence, and person, and of faith and certainty. Locke gave no quarter in the public controversy, but in the fourth edition of his Essay (1700) he silently amended some passages that had provoked Stillingfleet. See also CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS , DEISM , DESCARTES , LOCK. M.A.St.