Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Collins, John (1632?-1687)
COLLINS, JOHN (1632?–1687), congregational minister, was born in England, but educated in America. It is not impossible that he was the John Collins, aged three years, who sailed for New England in the Abigail on 30 June 1635, with the rest of the family of Henry Collins, starch-maker, whose conformity was certified by the minister of Stepney parish. His father became a deacon of the congregational church at Cambridge, Mass. John graduated at Harvard in 1649, and became a fellow. In 1659 he was acting as chaplain to General Monk, whom he accompanied from Scotland to London. Monk dismissed his independent chaplains in March 1660, when he turned to the presbyterians. Collins held no preferment at the date of the Uniformity Act of 1662, but is included by Calamy among the silenced ministers. Subsequently he succeeded Thomas Mallory (ejected from the lectureship of St. Michael's, Crooked Lane) as pastor of a congregational church in Lime Street. He was also one of the Pinners' Hall lecturers. He is described as a good preacher, and a man of catholic spirit. He died on 3 Dec. 1687. His son Thomas (educated at Utrecht) was elected copastor at Lime Street in 1697. According to Calamy, Collins published no separate work, but furnished a sermon to the London 'Farewell Sermons' (1663), 8vo; and another (anonymous) to the third volume (1676) of 'Morning Exercise at Cripplegate,' edited by Samuel Annesley, D.D. [q. v.] In conjunction with James Baron, B.D., he wrote a prefatory epistle to Ralph Venning's 'Remains, or Christ's School,' &c. (1675), 8vo; he also wrote an epistle prefixed to a 'Discourse of the Glory to which God hath called Believers' (1677), 12mo, by Jonathan Mitchel, a New England divine.
[Cotton Mather's Hist. New Eng. (1702), pt. iv. 136, 200; Calamy's Account (1713), p. 837; Continuation (1727), p. 962; Palmer's Nonconf. Memorial (1802), ii. 4, (1803) iii. 511; Hist. Acct. of my own Life, 2nd ed. (1830), i. 142; Neal's Hist. Puritans (Dublin, 1759), iv. 203; Original Lists of Emigrants to America (1874), p. 97.]