STILLINGFLEET, EDWARD, Bishop of Worcester, and "renowned," according to Lord Macaulay, "as a consummate master of all the weapons of controversy," was born at Cranborne, in Dorsetshire, in 1635. He was educated at St John's College, Cambridge; and having received holy orders, was, in 1657, presented to the rectory of Sutton in Nottinghamshire. In 1659 appeared his first work, entitled, Irenicum, or the Divine Right of particular Forms of Church Government Examined. By publishing his Origines Sacrae, one of the ablest defences of revealed religion that has ever been written, he soon acquired such reputation, that he was appointed preacher of the Rolls Chapel; and in January 1665 was presented to the rectory of St Andrews, Holborn. He was afterwards chosen lecturer at the Temple, and appointed chaplain in ordinary to King Charles II. In 1668 he took the degree of D.D.; and was soon after engaged in a dispute with those of the Romish religion, by publishing his discourse concerning the idolatry and fanaticism of the Church of Rome, which discourse he afterwards defended against several antagonists. In 1680 he preached at Guildhall Chapel a sermon on Phil. iii. 26, which he published under the title of The Mischief of Separation; and this being immediately attacked by several writers, he, in 1683, published his Unreasonableness of Separation. In 1685 appeared his Origines Britannicae, or the Antiquities of the British Churches, in folio. During the reign of King James II., he wrote several tracts against popery, and was prolocutor of the convocation, as he had likewise been under Charles II. After the Revolution he was advanced to the bishopric of Worcester, and was engaged in a dispute with the Socinians, and also with Mr Locke; in which last contest he is generally thought to have been unsuccessful. He died at Westminster in 1699, and was interred in the cathedral of Worcester, where a monument was erected to his memory by his son, bearing a highly eulogistic Latin epitaph from the pen of Bentley, who had been his chaplain. Dr Stillingfleet wrote other works besides those here mentioned, which, with the above, have been reprinted in six volumes, folio, 1710.