nce has bestowed on, you, and your virtues
entitle you to. I know you loved me living, and will preserve my memory
now I am dead. * * * I leave my best wishes with you.

"John Locke."

Such is the honorable connection which existed between Locke and
Collins. Collins's first publication was a tract, "Several of the London
Cases Considered," in the year 1700. In 1707, he published an "Essay
Concerning the Use of Reason on Propositions, the evidence whereof
depends upon Human Testimony;" "in which," says Dr. Leland, "there are
some good observations, mixed with others of a suspicious nature and
tendency." It principally turned on the Trinitarian controversy then
raging, and is of little interest now. In this year Collins united
with Dodwell in the controversy carried on by Dr. Samuel Clarke. One
of Clarke's biographers alludes to it thus: "Dr. Clarke's arguments
in favor of the immateriality, and consequent immortality of the soul,
called out, however, a far more formidable antagonist than Dodwell,
in the person of Anthony Collins, an English gentleman of singular
intellectual acuteness, but, unhappily, of Infidel principles. The
controversy was continued through several short treatises. On the whole,
though Clarke, in some instances, laid himself open to the keen and
searching dialectics of his gifted antagonist, the victory certainly
remained with the Divine." Of course it is only to be expected that such
will be the opinion of an opponent--but it is further proof of Collins's
ability and character. In 1703 appeared his celebrated "Discourses
of Freethinking," which perhaps created the greatest sensation in the
religious world (with the exception of the "Age of Reason") of any book
published against Christianity. This book is as able a defence of
the freedom of the expression of thought without penalty, as was ever
published. It is divided into four sections. In the 1st, Freethinking
is defined--in five arguments. In the 2nd, That it is our duty to
think freely on those points of which men are denied the right to think
freely: such as of the nature and attributes of God, the truth and
authority of Scriptures, and of the meaning of Scriptures, in seven
arguments and eleven instances. The third section is the consideration
of six objections to Freethinking--from the whole of which he concludes
(1) That Freethinkers must have more understanding, and that they must
necessarily be the most virtuous people. (2) That they ha