He died at his house in Harley Street, London, on the 13th of December 1729.
His writings are important as gathering together the results of previous English Freethinkers. The imperturbable courtesy of his style is in striking contrast to the violence of his opponents; and it must be remembered that, in spite of his unorthodoxy, he was not an atheist or even an agnostic. In his own words, “Ignorance is the foundation of atheism, and freethinking the cure of it” (Discourse of Freethinking, 105).
His first work of note was his Essay concerning the Use of Reason in Propositions the Evidence whereof depends on Human Testimony (1707), in which he rejected the distinction between above reason and contrary to reason, and demanded that revelation should conform to man’s natural ideas of God. Like all his works, it was published anonymously, although the identity of the author was never long concealed. Six years later appeared his chief work, A Discourse of Freethinking, occasioned by the Rise and Growth of a Sect called Freethinkers (1713). Notwithstanding the ambiguity of its title, and the fact that it attacks the priests of all churches without moderation, it contends for the most part, at least explicitly, for no more than must be admitted by every Protestant. Freethinking is a right which cannot and must not be limited, for it is the only means of attaining to a knowledge of truth, it essentially contributes to the well-being of society, and it is not only permitted but enjoined by the Bible. In fact the first introduction of Christianity and the success of all missionary enterprise involve freethinking (in its etymological sense) on the part of those converted. In England this essay, which was regarded and treated as a plea for deism, made a great sensation, calling forth several replies, among others from William Whiston, Bishop Hare, Bishop Hoadly, and Richard Bentley, who, under the signature of Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, roughly handles certain arguments carelessly expressed by Collins, but triumphs chiefly by an attack on trivial points of scholarship, his own pamphlet being by no means faultless in this very respect. Swift also, being satirically referred to in the book, made it the subject of a caricature.
In 1724 Collins published his Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion, with An Apology for Free Debate and Liberty of Writing prefixed. Ostensibly it is written in opposition to Whiston’s attempt to show that the books of the Old Testament did originally contain prophecies of events in the New Testament story, but that these had been eliminated or corrupted by the Jews, and to prove that the fulfilment of prophecy by the events of Christ’s life is all “secondary, secret, allegorical, and mystical,” since the original and literal reference is always to some other fact. Since, further, according to him the fulfilment of prophecy is the only valid proof of Christianity, he thus secretly aims a blow at Christianity as a revelation. The canonicity of the New Testament he ventures openly to deny, on the ground that the canon could be fixed only by men who were inspired. No less than thirty-five answers were directed against this book, the most noteworthy of which were those of Bishop Edward Chandler, Arthur Sykes and Samuel Clarke. To these, but with special reference to the work of Chandler, which maintained that a number of prophecies were literally fulfilled in Christ, Collins replied by his Scheme of Literal Prophecy Considered (1727). An appendix contends against Whiston that the book of Daniel was forged in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes (see Deism).
In philosophy, Collins takes a foremost place as a defender of Necessitarianism. His brief Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (1715) has not been excelled, at all events in its main outlines, as a statement of the determinist standpoint. One of his arguments, however, calls for special criticism,—his assertion that it is self-evident that nothing that has a beginning can be without a cause is an unwarranted assumption of the very point at issue. He was attacked in an elaborate treatise by Samuel Clarke, in whose system the freedom of the will is made essential to religion and morality. During Clarke’s lifetime, fearing perhaps to be branded as an enemy of religion and morality, Collins made no reply, but in 1729 he published an answer, entitled Liberty and Necessity.
Besides these works he wrote A Letter to Mr Dodwell, arguing that it is conceivable that the soul may be material, and, secondly, that if the soul be immaterial it does not follow, as Clarke had contended, that it is immortal; Vindication of the Divine Attributes (1710); Priestcraft in Perfection (1709), in which he asserts that the clause “the Church . . . Faith” in the twentieth of the Thirty-nine Articles was inserted by fraud.
See Kippis, Biographia Britannica; G. Lechler, Geschichte des englischen Deismus (1841); J. Hunt, Religious Thought in England, ii. (1871); Leslie Stephen, English Thought in the 18th Century, i. (1881); A. W. Benn, Hist. of English Rationalism in the 19th Century (London, 1906), vol. i. ch. iii.; J. M. Robertson, Short History of Freethought (London, 1906); and Deism.
COLLINS, JOHN CHURTON (1848–1908), English literary critic, was born on the 26th of March 1848 at Bourton on the Water, Gloucestershire. From King Edward’s school, Birmingham, he went to Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1872, and at once devoted himself to a literary career, as journalist, essayist and lecturer. His first book was a study of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1874), and later he edited various classical English writers, and published volumes on Bolingbroke and Voltaire in England (1886), a Study of English Literature (1891), a study of Dean Swift (1893), Essays and Studies (1895), Ephemera Critica (1901), Essays in Poetry and Criticism (1905), and Rousseau and Voltaire (1908), his original essays being sharply controversial in tone, but full of knowledge. In 1904 he became professor of English literature at Birmingham University. For many years he was a prominent University Extension lecturer, and a constant contributor to the principal reviews. On the 15th of September 1908 he was found dead in a ditch near Lowestoft, at which place he had been staying with a doctor for the benefit of his health. The circumstances necessitated the holding of an inquest, the verdict being that of “accidental death.”
COLLINS, MORTIMER (1827–1876), English writer, was born at Plymouth, where his father, Francis Collins, was a solicitor, on
the 29th of June 1827. He was educated at a private school, and after some years spent as mathematical master at Queen Elizabeth’s
College, Guernsey, he went to London, where he devoted himself to journalism in the Conservative interest. In 1855 he published his Idyls and Rhymes; and in 1865 appeared his first story, Who is the Heir? A second volume of lyrics, The Inn of Strange Meetings, was issued in 1871; and in 1872 he produced
his longest and best sustained poem, The British Birds, a communication from the Ghost of Aristophanes. He also wrote several capital novels, the best of which is perhaps Sweet Anne Page (1868). Some of his lyrics, in their light grace, their sparkling
wit, their airy philosophy, are equal to anything of their kind in
modern English. On his second marriage in 1868 he settled at
Knowl Hill, Berkshire. Collins was an athlete, an excellent
pedestrian, and an enthusiastic lover of country life; and from
this time he rarely left his home for a day. Conservative in his
political and literary tastes, an ardent upholder of Church and
State, he was yet a hater of convention; and his many and very
varied gifts endeared him to a large circle of friends. He died on
the 28th of July 1876.
COLLINS, WILLIAM (1721–1759), English poet, was born on the 25th of December 1721. He divides with Gray the glory of being the greatest English lyrist of the 18th century. After some childish studies in Chichester, of which his father, a rich hatter, was the mayor, he was sent, in January 1733, to Winchester College, where Whitehead and Joseph Warton were his school-fellows. When he had been nine months at the school, Pope paid Winchester a visit and proposed a subject for a prize poem; it is legitimate to suppose that the lofty forehead, the brisk dark eyes and gracious oval of the childish face, as we know it in the only portrait existing of Collins, did not escape the great man’s notice, then not a little occupied with the composition of the Essay on Man.
In 1734 the young poet published his first verses, in a sixpenny pamphlet on The Royal Nuptials, of which, however, no copy has come down to us; another poem, probably satiric, called The Battle of the Schoolbooks, was written about this time, and has also been lost. Fired by his poetic fellows to further feats in verse,
