just causes for breaking the unity of the Church? Collier undoubtedly acted injudiciously in pressing the points: since, whether primitive or otherwise, they had been rejected by the Church, and could not be revived without a reflection on her Bishops and Clergy since the Reformation: but it is evident, that all the violence was not on his side. He was indiscreet, but he did not favour the Church of Rome. The author of Mr. Collier's Desertion Discussed, himself a Nonjuror, positively charges Collier with popery—with setting up as the head of a new schism, "and so by unsuspected ways" leading "his sequacious disciples, by degrees, at last into the communion of the Church of Rome. At least it seems to me, that he has his conscience so disposed, as perhaps his Library may be: at that end Papists, and at that end Protestants, and he comes in the middle, as near one as the other."[1] Such a passage as this was unwarranted by the circumstances.
Apart, however, from these blemishes, the work is one of great interest, as containing the particulars of the disputes and the subsequent separation. Brett also has given his account: so that, in these two works, we have the particulars stated by two leading persons of the two divisions or sections of the party. The author of Collier's Desertion Discussed enters largely into the questions of the mixture and Prayers for the Dead: and, after enlarging on these topics, he remarks, that Collier and his friends had separated from a Church "reformed by full and sufficient authority, upon most mature and serious deliberation, with a perfect submission to the rule of the Holy Scripture, and with a proper deference and regard to
- ↑ Collier's Desertion Discussed, p. 3.
