Collins[411] must be studied under more than one aspect. He not only wrote on the logic of religion, the method of inquiry in theology, but also on the subject of scripture interpretation, and the reality of prophecy.[412]
It was in 1713 that he published “A discourse of free-thinking, occasioned by the rise and growth of a sect called Free-thinkers.” This is one of the first times that we find this new name used for Deists; and the object of his book is to defend the propriety of unlimited liberty of inquiry, a proposition by which he designed the unrestrained liberty of belief, not in a political point of view merely, but in a moral. His argument was not unlike more modern ones,[413] which show that civilization and improvement have been caused by free-thinking; and he adduces the growing disbelief in the reality of witchcraft, in proof of the way in which the rejection of dogma had ameliorated political [pg 134] science, which until recently had visited the supposed crime with the punishment of death.[414] After thus showing the duty of free-thinking,[415] he argued that the sphere of it ought to comprehend points on which the right is usually denied; such as the divine attributes, the truth of the scriptures, and their meaning;[416] establishing this by laying a number of charges against priests, to show that their dogmatic teaching cannot be trusted, unchallenged by free inquiry, on account of their discrepant[417] opinions, their rendering the canon and text of scripture uncertain,[418] and their pious frauds;[419] concluding by refuting objections against freethinking derived from its supposed want of safety.[420]
The book met with intelligent and able opponents; the critical part, containing the allegations of uncertainty in the text of scripture, and the charge of altering it, being effectually refuted by Bentley. The work is an exaggeration of a great truth. Undoubtedly free inquiry is right in all departments, but it must be restrained within the proper limits which the particular subject-matter admits of;—limits which are determined partly by the nature of the subject studied, partly by the laws of the thinking mind.
Eleven years afterwards, in 1724, Collins published his “Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian religion.” This work is chiefly critical. It does not merely contain the incipient doubts on the variety of readings, and the uncertainty of books, but spreads over several provinces of theological inquiry. Under the pretence of establishing Christianity on a more solid foundation, the author argues that our Saviour and his apostles made the whole proof of Christianity to rest solely on the prophecies of the Old Testament;[421] that if these proofs are valid, Christianity is established; if invalid, it is false.[422] Accordingly he examines several of the prophecies cited from the Old [pg 135] Testament in the New in favour of the Messiahship of Christ, with a view of showing that they are only allegorical or fanciful proofs, accommodations of the meaning of the prophecies; and anticipates the objections which could be stated to his views.[423] He asserts that the expectation of a Messiah among[424] the Jews arose only a short time before Christ's coming;[425] and that the apostles put a new interpretation on the Hebrew books, which was contrary to the sense accepted by the Jewish nation; that Christianity is not revealed in the Old Testament literally, but mystically and allegorically, and may therefore be considered as mystical Judaism. His inference is accordingly stated as an argument in favour of the figurative or mystical interpretation of scripture; but we can hardly doubt that his real object was an ironical one, to exhibit Christianity as resting on apostolic misinterpretations of Jewish prophecy, and thus to create the impression that it was a mere Jewish sect of men deceived by fanciful interpretations.
The work produced considerable alarm; more from the solemn interest and sacredness of the inquiries which it opened, than from any danger arising from excellence in its form, or ability in the mode of putting. It anticipated subsequent speculations,[426] by regarding Christianity as true ideally, not historically, and by insinuating the incorrectness of the apostolic adoption of the mystical system of interpreting the ancient scripture.
A writer came forward as moderator[427] between Collins and his opponents, who himself afterwards became [pg 136] still more noted, by directing an attack on miracles, similar to that of Collins on prophecy;—the unhappy Woolston.[428] A fellow of a college[429] at Cambridge, in holy orders, he was for many years a diligent student of the fathers, and imbibed from them an extravagant attachment to the allegorical sense of scripture. Finding that his views met with no support in that reasoning age, he broke out into unmeasured insult and contempt against his brother clergy, as slaves to the letter of scripture.[430] Deprived of his fellowship,[431] and distracted by penury, he extended his hatred from the ministers to the religion which they ministered. And when, in reply to Collins's assertion, that Christianity reposed solely on prophecy, the Christian apologists fell back on miracles, he wrote in 1727 and the two following years his celebrated Discourses on the Miracles. ([22]) They were published as pamphlets; in each one of which he examined a few of the miracles of Christ, trying to show such inconsistencies as to make it appear that they must be regarded as untrustworthy if taken literally; and hence he advocated a figurative interpretation of them; asserting that the history of the life of Jesus is an emblematical representation of his spiritual life in the soul of man.[432] The gospels thus become a system of mystical theology, instead of a literal history. In defence of this method he claimed the example of the ancient church,[433] ignoring the fact that the fathers admitted a literal as well as a figurative meaning. Whether he really retained towards the close of his life the spiritual interpretation,[434] or merely [pg 137] used it as an excuse for a more secure advance to the assault of the historic reality of scripture, is very uncertain.
The letters were written with a coarseness and irreverence so singular, even in the attacks of that age, that it were well if they could be attributed to insanity. They contain the most undisguised abuse which had been uttered against Christianity since the days of the early heathens. Occasionally, when wishing to utter grosser blasphemies than were permissible by law, or compatible with his assumed Christian stand-point, he introduced a Jewish rabbi, as Celsus had formerly done, and put the coarser calumnies into his mouth,[435] as difficulties to which no reply could be furnished except by figurative interpretation. The humour which marked these pamphlets was so great, that the sale of them was immense. Voltaire, who was in England at the time, and perhaps imbibed thence part of his own opinions, states the immediate sale to have exceeded thirty thousand copies;[436] and Swift describes them as the food of every politician.[437] The excitement was so great, that Gibson, then bishop of London, thought it necessary to direct five pastorals to his diocese in reference to them,[438] and, not content with this, caused Woolston to be prosecuted; and the unhappy man, not able to pay the fine in which he was condemned, continued in prison till his death.[439]
In classifying Woolston with later writers against miracles, he may be compared in some cases, though with striking differences of tone, with those German rationalists like Paulus who have rationalized the miracles, but in more cases with those who like Strauss have idealized them. His method however is an appeal to general probability rather than to literary criticism.
The next form that Deism assumed has reference more to the internal than the external part of Christianity, the doctrines rather than the evidences. Less critical than the last-named tendency, it differs from the earlier one of Toland in looking at religion less on the speculative side as a revelation of dogma, and more on the practical as a revelation of duties. While it combined into a system the former objections, critical or philosophical, the great weapon which it uses is the authority of the moral reason, by which it both tests revelation and suggests a substitute in natural religion, thus using it both destructively and for construction.
Dr. Tindal,[440] the first writer of this class, had early given offence to the church by his writings; but it was not till 1730, in his extreme old age, that he published his celebrated dialogue, “Christianity as old as the Creation, or, the Gospel a Republication of the Religion of Nature.” This was not only the most important work that deism had yet produced, composed with care, and bearing the marks of thoughtful study of the chief contemporary arguments, Christian as well as Deist, but derives an interest from the circumstance that it was the book to which more than to any other single work bishop Butler's Analogy was designed as the reply.