Edward Stillingfleet, who has claimed our attention both as a healer and a stirrer up of strife, although not a doctrinal controversialist, demands some notice as a writer on Christian evidences. His broad and moderate churchmanship at the period of the Restoration, and his sympathy also at that time with the Latitudinarian Divines of Cambridge,--where he was educated and obtained a Fellowship at St. John’s in 1653,--entitle him to a place amongst them in the early part of his life.[481] It was in the year 1662, that he published his “_Origines Sacræ_; or Rational Account of the Christian Faith, as to the Truth and Divine Authority of the Scripture.” His learning, acuteness, logical ability, and lawyer-like habit of thought eminently fitted him for controversy, and these talents are signally displayed in the book now mentioned. The first part is occupied with an exposure of the obscurity, defect, and uncertainty of heathen histories, and of heathen chronology. In the treatment of this subject, he so completely undermines the credibility of all ancient history, except what is in Scripture, that he unwittingly precludes the proper use of the former in certain instances as a corroboration of the latter. He does not with thorough care distinguish between insufficiency and a complete want of authority. In the second book, he dwells on the knowledge, fidelity, and integrity of Moses; and upon the proofs of a Divine inspiration of the prophets from the fulfilment of their prophecies; but in this part of his work, he does not so much anticipate the details of the modern argument, as unfold the principles upon which he conceived the argument should rest. The evidence from miracles is also exhibited. The third book, to which the title of _Origines_ particularly points, treats of the being of God, and the origin of the universe,--of evil--of the nations of the earth--and of the Heathen Mythology. In connection with the origin of nations, he vindicates the Scripture history of the Deluge, and falls into harmony with modern geologists, by confessing that he sees no necessity from Scripture, to assert, that the flood spread itself over the whole surface of the earth.[482]