Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article I examine Edward Stillingfleet’s last published work and the critique of Rene Descartes’s natural philosophy therein which appeared in 1702 as an incomplete appendix to the revised edition of his well-known Origines Sacrae to explore the depiction of God’s power that underwrote his assessment of Cartesianism mechanical philosophy and its inclination to atheism. I consider both Stillingfleet’s characterization of God’s relationship with the creation and the contextual sources he used to support it, to show that his refutation of Descartes’s work was wrapped in the language of voluntarist theology.