to Deity. But his opponents, in the loose fashion of that period, considered him an Atheist.
Bentley assumed that Collins was one of “those Atheists, who, looking at their own actions, wish there was no God; and because they wish there were none, persuade themselves there is none.” There was little likelihood of Atheism, if it existed, being known, whilst ‘Atheist’ was considered the synonym of ‘scoundrel.’” Collins says that his expression of his opinion was carefully kept “within the bounds of doing himself no harm.” He always published anonymously, or with but his initials. But the authorship of his works never remained long a secret. It was probably his position which saved him from attack. How else can we explain it that Blount, Shaftesbury and Collins, who were rich, escaped, while Toland, Woolston and Annet, who were poor, were prosecuted, and the two latter severely punished, for their heresies?
In the advertisement to his Alciphron, Bishop Berkeley says he “is well assured that one of the most noted writers against Christianity in our times declared he had found out a demonstration against the being of a God.” From Dr. Chandler’s Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson—not the lexicographer, but an American friend of Berkeley—it appears that this noted writer was Collins. Chandler says (p. 57): “Mr. Johnson, in one of his visits to the Dean [Berkeley], conversing with him on the work on hand [Alciphron] was more particularly informed by him that he himself [the Dean] had heard this strange declaration, while he was present in one of the deistical clubs, in the pretended character of a learner, that Collins was the man who made it; and that the ‘demonstration’ was what he afterwards published, in an attempt to prove that every action is the effect of Fate and Necessity, in his book entitled A Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty. And, indeed, could the point be once established, that everything is produced by Fate and Necessity, it would naturally follow that there is no God, or that he is a very useless and insignificant Being, which amounts to the same thing.”
This anecdote must evidently be taken with caution. According to Collins the way to demonstrate the non-existence of God would be to demonstrate the freedom of the will—the very thing he is opposing. No doubt his opposition to Christianity
