Patronage, Politics and Views
Stillingfleet had to wait many years for a bishopric, a fact linked to his disfavour at Court in the 1680s. He never, though, lacked for well-connected patrons. The first was Sir Roger Burgoyne, 2nd Baronet, a barrister and MP in the Long Parliament, in whose gift was Sutton, Bedfordshire, his living; followed by Francis Pierrepont, a Parliamentarian colonel and younger brother of Henry Pierrepont, 1st Marquess of Dorchester (a Royalist) and William Pierrepont (like Francis a Parliamentarian). These both offered him tutoring positions. He was also supported by Harbottle Grimstone, who as Master of the Rolls gave him a preaching position in the Rolls Chapel.
The transition at the Restoration was certainly problematic. Earl of Southampton presented Stillingfleet to St Andrew, Holborn. Humphrey Henchman, Bishop of London, employed him to write a vindication of William Laud's answer to John Percy (alias Fisher). According to Jon Parkin,
| “ | The apparent ease with which younger writers like Stillingfleet squared their allegiance to the restored regime, coupled with their espousal of a naturalistic, erastian and apparently Hobbesian ecclesiology, earned them the description of 'men of latitude'. | ” |
Stillingfleet was a leader within the Church of England of the "latitudinarians", the group of Anglicans thus defined pejoratively. Latitudinarism as doctrine was considered to have grown from the teaching of the Cambridge Platonists, but in practical terms conditions at the Restoration did not favour it. Quite a number of its Cambridge adherents left an unpromising career in religion for the law, or had to rely for patronage on those who had done so.
Stillingfleet was most closely associated, in his attitudes, with such as Isaac Barrow, Robert South and John Tillotson. They agreed, for example, on a literal interpretation to Biblical exegesis, discarding allegorical readings. With Tillotson he favoured the so-called Erastian view, that the ruler had great powers over the Church, from the days of 1660; after the Glorious Revolution they became Low Church moderates. With Gilbert Burnet, Benjamin Hoadly, Simon Patrick, William Powell and William Whiston, he held some High Church views also.
With Thomas Tenison, Stillingfleet and Tillotson preached on behalf of reason and natural religion. They were broadly Arminian rather than Calvinist, took the stock of core beliefs to be a small set of fundamentals, and in Stillingfleet's case supported reconciliation with Presbyterians.
| “ | ...stood for an attitude and a temper rather than for any particular creed. Though they did not abandon the objective side of religion, their emphasis was primarily on a proper moral outlook of life. They tried to meet what they believed were the greatest intellectual and ethical needs of their generation, and, in so doing, they contributed to the changing character of theology from being dogmatic to being rationalistic. | ” |
In 1674 they met with Richard Baxter and Thomas Manton, in an attempt to draft a reconciliation with the nonconformists.
They were largely sympathetic with the new science of their times. Stillingfleet did draw the line at the materialist tendency in the views of Edmond Halley, whom he examined with the help of Richard Bentley in 1691, when Halley applied for the Savilian Chair of Astronomy.
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