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Work #1478 · Early-career

Origines Sacrae

Edward Stillingfleet
1662 (revised editions through 1675) · English
Apologetic-theological treatise · Latitudinarian Anglicanism / Restoration philosophical theology / Cambridge-Platonist-influenced rational religion

Stillingfleet's 1662 'Origines Sacrae' — Restoration-Anglican rational defence of Christian truth against deist and atheist challenge

Attribute Fingerprint

Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.

Attribute Origines Sacrae (Early-career)
Time · Extent Finite
Time · Ontological Status Substantival
Time · Grain Continuous
Time · Freedom Both
Time · Traversability Linear
Time · Dimensionality One
Time · Direction Uni-directional
Space · Extent Finite
Space · Ontological Status Substantival
Space · Curvature Flat
Space · Dimensionality Three
Space · Locality Local
Matter · Extent Finite
Matter · Ontological Status Substantival
Matter · Conservation Conserved
Matter · Dimensionality Three
Matter · Locality Local
Observer · Time Instance Single
Observer · Space Instance Single
Observer · Knowledge Extent Immediate
Observer · Knowledge Retainment Total
Observer · Physicality Embodied
Observer · Agency Active
Observer · Number Plural
Observer · Metaphysical Agency Limited
Observer · Moral Authority Revelation
Observer · Theological Method
Energy · Extent Finite
Energy · Ontological Status Substantival
Energy · Conservation Conserved
Energy · Dispersibility Irreversible
Information · Ontological Status Substantival
Information · Cosmic Conservation Conserved
Information · Personal Conservation Conserved
Information · Granularity Continuous

Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence

What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.

Time

Origines Sacrae

1662 publication. Stillingfleet was 27 and had been ordained in 1661; his career was just beginning.

Space

Origines Sacrae

London — Stillingfleet was at this time rector of Sutton in Bedfordshire but moving in London ecclesiastical-intellectual circles (Tillotson, Stilling fleet, and Patrick formed the 'Latitudinarian' triumvirate of post-Restoration Anglican apologetics).

Matter

Origines Sacrae

Single large apologetic treatise (~600 pages in original folio). Form is three-book historical-philosophical apologetics: each book combines philological-historical scholarship with philosophical argument.

Observer

Origines Sacrae

Young Stillingfleet defending Christian revelation rationally. The observer is the rising apologist who would become Dean of St Paul's (1678) and Bishop of Worcester (1689).

Energy

Origines Sacrae

Sustained apologetic energies of the post-Civil-War return-to-orthodoxy. The Restoration's distinctive intellectual mood — recoil from 1640s-50s sectarianism, search for a moderate-rational Anglican via media — pervades the book.

Information

Origines Sacrae

Three-book treatise with extensive scholarly apparatus. The book's scholarly density (Stillingfleet's command of Hebrew, Greek, and the Patristic sources) was distinctive among contemporary apologetics.

Internal Tensions

Where each work's argument pulls against itself.

Origines Sacrae

Stillingfleet's career-launching apologetic; standard Restoration-Anglican reference text for a century. Read continuously by subsequent Anglican apologists (Tillotson, Locke, Bentley, Butler); the rational-historical apologetic methodology shaped subsequent Anglican-philosophical-theological work and made Stillingfleet's later 1696 'Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity' (which engaged Locke) a continuation of this earlier methodology.