Hoadley, ... as it was upon the true and only point worth disputing with y

     e

    Preists, viz whether we the laity are the Calves and Sheep of the Preist. And I am not less pleasd to see them manage this controversy with y

     e

    same vile arts against one another, as they always use towards the laity. It must open the eyes of a few and convince them, that the Preists mean nothing but wealth and power, and have not the least ... of those qualitys for w

     ch

    the superstitious world admires them.

      [17]

   He applied this principle of divisive attack in

    A Discourse of Free-Thinking

   . There in fifty-three pages he transparently ridiculed contradictions which hedged three areas of fundamental religious belief:

    “The Nature and Attributes of the Eternal Being or God, ... the Authority of Scriptures, and ... the Sense of Scripture.”

   In accordance with one of his favorite tricks—the massing of eminent authority—his exposition rings with hallowed Anglican names: South, Bull, Taylor, Wallis, Carlton, Davenant, Edwards, More, Tillotson, Fowler, Sherlock, Stillingfleet, Sacheverell, Beveridge, Grabe, Hickes, Lesley.

     [18]

   What united these men, he insinuated, was not a Christian commitment but a talent to disagree with one another and even to repudiate themselves—as in the case of Stillingfleet. In effect, the entire

    Discourse

   bubbles with a carelessly suppressed snicker.

   The clergy could not readily reply to this kind of incriminating exposure or deny its reality. They therefore overreacted to other judgments that Collins made, particularly to his attacks upon Christian revelation. These they denigrated as misleading, guileful, sinister, contrived, 

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