In 1718 Collins was appointed treasurer of the county of Essex, an office which he performed with great fidelity. Ile married, in 1724, his second wife, the daughter of Sir Walter Wrottesley, Bart. In the same year he published his ' Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion,' in which his object is to show that Christiauity is founded and dependent on Judaism; that the New Testament is based upon the Old, as the canon of Christians ; that the apostles and writers of the former establish and prove their propositions from the latter; and that none of the passages they adduce are literally, but merely typically and allegorically, applicable, by the assumption of a double coustruction. This work created a great sensation iu the church, and drew forth a great number of replies from Immo of the most eminent divines. In the final answer of Collins, ' Scheme of Literal Prophecy,' 1726, he enumerates five-and-thirty replies which appeared during the first two years after its publication. The artful way in which Collins availed himself of the theory of Wbiston respecting the corruption of the present Hebrew text, eo provoked that divine, that he petitioned Lord Chancellor King, though without success, to remove Mr. Collins
from the commission of the peace. In 1727 Collins, in a long letter, replied to eight sermons of Dr. Rogers on the necessity of revelation and the truth of Christiauity. He died in December 1729, at his house in Ilarley.-etreet All parties agree that the moral and social cha racter of Collins was remarkably amiable. His integrity, energy, and impartiality in the exercise of his magisterial functious commanded the highest respect, and by his conduct aud writings he ardently endeavoured to promote the cause of civil aud religious liberty. Collins, as a writer, is remarkable for the great shrewdness of his reasoning : and for still greater subtilty in masking the real drift of hie arguments with orthodox professions. His library, which was of groat extent and extremely curious, was open to all men of letters, to whom he readily communicated whatever ho knew. A catalogue of his books was published by the Rev. Dr. Sykes in 1730.