t 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]

II

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