Edward Stilllngfleet, an English bishop, born in Cranborne, Dorset, April 17, 1635, died in London, March 27, 1699. He was educated at Cambridge, at the age of 18 obtained a fellowship, and in 1657 was presented to the rectory of Sutton. Subsequently he became chaplain in ordinary to Charles II. and dean of St. Paul's, and in 1689 bishop of "Worcester. He published " Irenicum, or the Divine Eight of particular Forms of Church Government Examined" (1659), manifesting much more toleration than his later works; " A Rational Account of the Grounds of Protestant Religion" (fob, 1664); "Discourse concerning the Idolatry practised in the Church of Romo" (1671); a sermon against the nonconformists entitled "The Mischief of Separation," to the criticisms upon which he replied in a volume entitled " The Unreasonableness of Separation" (4to, 1681); and tracts against Roman Catholics and Socinians. He is best known by his "Origines Sacra), or Rational Account of the Grounds of Natural and Revealed Religion" (4to, 1662), and his "Origines Britannicae, or the Antiquities of the British Churches " (1685). When James II. revived the court of ecclesiastical commission, Stillingfleet refused to be a member of it, and after the revolution of 1688 he published a discourse concerning the illegality of the commission.

In the latter part of his life ho engaged in a sharp controversy with Locke on the latter's definition of substance and theory of ideas in general. His works were printed in 1710 in 6 vols, fol., to which was added in 1735 a volume of his miscellaneous writings.