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