Abstract
The quotation in my title comes from Origines Sacrae (1662). Edward Stillingfleet is not in fact describing himself and his adversary John Sergeant, but rather making a general observation about the nature of philosophy after its alleged degeneration: historically, he claims, philosophers grew more concerned with innovating than with seeking truth; so they engaged in ‘disputes and altercations, which helped as much to the finding of Truth, as the fighting of two Cocks on a dunghill doth the finding out the Jewel that lyes there’.1
Edward Stillingfleet, Origines Sacrae, or A Rational Account of the Grounds of Christian Faith (London, 1662), p. 429.
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© 1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Southgate, B. (1999). ‘The Fighting of Two Cocks on a Dung-Hill’: Stillingfleet Versus Sergeant. In: Coudert, A.P., Hutton, S., Popkin, R.H., Weiner, G.M. (eds) Judaeo-Christian Intellectual Culture in the Seventeenth Century. Archives Internationales D’Histoire des Idées / International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 163. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4633-3_13
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