'Origines Sacrae: or, A Rational Account of the Grounds of Christian Faith, as to the Truth and Divine Authority of the Scriptures

1680. Fifth edition (the original title-page is missing and has been replaced with a recent facsimile copy from the fifth edition). [xxxii], 579pp. This pagination only occurs in the 1680 5th edition. Edward Stillingfleet (1635-1699) was an English Christian theologian and scholar. Considered an outstanding preacher as well as a strong polemical writer defending Anglicanism, Stillingfleet was known as "the beauty of holiness" for his good looks in the pulpit, and was called by John Hough "the ablest man of his time". First published in 1662, his , 'Origines Sacrae' is one of the most ambitious Restoration-Anglican defences of revealed religion. Written in the years immediately following the 1660 Restoration of Charles II, the book defends Christianity against contemporary deist, libertine, and atheist objections through three principal arguments: (Book I) the historical reliability of the Old Testament narratives; (Book II) the prophetic and miraculous credentials of the New Testament; (Book III) the rational grounds of Christian belief generally. The book is methodologically distinctive in combining philological-historical scholarship with philosophical apologetics. It became a standard work of Restoration-Anglican apologetics, repeatedly reprinted into the eighteenth century. The book has been re-bound in later (probably late 20th C.) brown cloth covered boards with a brown leather spine and gold titliing on a leather label and five raised bands on the spine. The date 1662 has been stamped in gold on the bottom of the spine, not the date of 1680 as shown on the facsimile title-page. The case of the book is in very good condition with some shelf wear to the boards and light rubbing to the spine ends. The contents are tight and the book has new cream endpapers. The pages are clean apart from a few expected small marks and stains and a small water stain near the middle of the fore edge of the last few pages and some soiling on the last page and the first page (dedication page). The dedication page also has small pieces missing from the corners and fore edge and the following few pages have small pieces missing from the top corner. Pages 200 to 245 have a bump on the bottom corner that has caused a gentle crease across the corner. A name, place and date (1993) has been written on the front fixed endpaper. …