Can reason replace revelation? The provocative philosophy of England’s most notorious eighteenth-century freethinker.
In short: Anthony Collins was a central figure in the English Deist movement, a group that championed natural religion over church dogma. By arguing that faith must conform to rational inquiry, he sparked intense controversy, challenged the clerical establishment, and became a lightning rod for the most heated intellectual debates of his era.
Anthony Collins was a prominent English Deist and a close associate of John Locke. During the eighteenth century, Deism emerged as a movement advocating for a natural religion based on innate human reason rather than divine revelation or institutional church teachings. Collins and his contemporaries, including figures like Matthew Tindal and Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, sought to strip away the pomp and ceremony of established religious bodies, which they often viewed as corrupt or unnecessary.
The Deist ideal was a sober, rational faith that rejected the passionate excesses of religious fanatics. Collins was particularly militant in his critiques of the clergy, famously asserting in his 1709 work, Priestcraft in Perfection, that specific articles of faith had been inserted into church doctrine through fraud. His 1713 publication, A Discourse of Freethinking, argued that the right to think freely was essential for attaining truth and was not only permitted but encouraged by the Bible itself. This stance drew fierce opposition from orthodox figures, including Bishop Edward Stillingfleet, who had earlier labeled Deism as a term of opprobrium.
Beyond his religious critiques, Collins was a formidable defender of necessitarianism, a determinist philosophical position he outlined in his 1717 Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty. He argued that God’s role was limited to the original act of creation, after which the universe functioned according to rational, discoverable laws. While his opponents often attempted to paint him as an atheist, Collins maintained that ignorance was the true foundation of atheism, and that freethinking was its only effective cure. His legacy remains defined by his role in the English Deist controversy, which reached its peak between 1689 and 1742, a period of relative religious freedom following the Glorious Revolution.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Anthony Collins | 18th-century, philosopher, deist | Britannica
- Also: Anthony Collins (philosopher)
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