A discourse concerning ridicule and irony in writing (1729) — Themes and Context

Collins was animated by his many debates. Indeed, "he sought the storms." Otherwise he would not, could not, have participated in these many verbal contests. Throughout them all, his basic strategy--that of provocation--was determined by the very real fact that he had many more enemies than allies, among them, for instance, such formidable antagonists as Swift and Richard Bentley.[10] To survive he had to acquire a tough resilience, a skill in fending off attacks or turning them to his own advantage. Nevertheless, he remained a ready target all his life. Understandably so: his radicalism was stubborn and his opinions predictable. Such firmness may of course indicate his aversion to trimming. Or it may reveal a lack of intellectual growth; what he believed as a young man, he perpetuated as a mature adult. Whether our answer is drawn from either possibility or, more realistically, from both, the fact remains that he never camouflaged the two principles by which he lived and fought:

1. That universal liberty be established in respect to opinions and practises not prejudicial to the peace and welfare of society: by which establishment, truth must needs have the advantages over _error_ and _falsehood_, the _law_ of _God_ over the _will_ of _man_, and _true Christianity tolerated_; private _judgment_ would be really exercised; and men would be allowed to have suffered to follow their consciences, over which God only is supreme:...

2. Secondly, that nothing but the _law of nature_, (the observance whereof is absolutely necessary to society) and what can be built thereon, should be enforced by the civil sanctions of the magistrate:...[11]

There is very little in this statement to offend modern readers. Yet the orthodox in Collins's own time had reason to be angry with him: his arguments were inflammatory and his rhetoric was devious, cheeky, and effective. Those contesting him underscored his negativism, imaging him as a destroyer of Christianity eager "to proselyte men, from the Christian to no religion at all."[12] Certainly it is true that he aimed to disprove a Christian revelation which he judged fraudulent and conspiratorial. In place of ecclesiastical authority he offered the rule of conscience. For orthodoxy he substituted "a Religion antecedent to Revelation, which is necessary to be known in order to _ascertain Revelation_; and by that Religion [he meant] _Natural Religion_, which is presupposed to Revelation, and is a Test by which Reveal'd Religion is to be tried, is a Bottom on which it must stand, and is a Rule to understand it by."[13] Categorical in tone, the statement frustrated the Anglican clergy by its very slipperiness; its generalities left little opportunity for decisive rebuttal. It provided no definition of natural religion beyond the predication of a body of unnamed moral law which is rational and original, the archetype of what is valid in the world's religions.

His dismissal of revelation and his reduction of Christianity to what he called its "natural" and hence incontrovertible basis carried with it a corollary, that of man's absolute right to religious enquiry and profession. Here he became specific, borrowing from Lockean empiricism his conditions of intellectual assent. "Evidence," he said, "ought to be the sole ground of Assent, and Examination is the way to arrive at Evidence; and therefore rather than I wou'd have Examination, Arguing and Objecting laid aside, I wou'd chuse to say, That no Opinions whatever can be dangerous to a Man that impartially examines into the Truth of Things."[14] The church leadership saw in this statement and others like it not an epistemological premise but a deliberate subterfuge, an insidious blind to vindicate his attacks upon an organized priesthood. We can recognize now that his opponents oversimplified his intention, that they blackened it to make his villainy at once definitive and vulnerable. At the same time we must admit that he often equated the ideas of repression and clerical authority, even as he coupled those of freedom and the guide of private conscience.