Jeremy Collier (1650–1726) was an Anglican Church historian, clergyman, and theater critic. He was the leader of the Nonjurors, Anglican clergy who refused to take the oaths of allegiance to William III and Mary II in 1689.
Born in Stow, Cambridgeshire, and educated at Ipswich and Cambridge, Collier became rector of Ampton, and a lecturer at Gray’s Inn, London. He opposed William III and Mary II, refusing to take the Oath of Allegiance in 1689. Vicious in his polemics, Collier spent some time in prison and short-term exile abroad as a political outlaw.
Collier is best known for A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698,) an intense attack on Restoration dramatists.
Collier also wrote the Great Historical, Geographical, Genealogical, and Poetical Dictionary (4 vols., 1701–21) and the scholarly An Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain (2 vols., 1708–14.)
In 1713, Collier was consecrated as a ‘bishop of the Nonjurors,’ and he joined in their effort at the reunion with the Eastern Orthodox Church.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Jeremy Collier
Hope is a vigorous principle; it is furnished with light and heat to advise and execute; it sets the head and heart to work, and animates a man to do his utmost. And thus, by perpetually pushing and assurance, it puts a difficulty out of countenance, and makes a seeming impossibility give way.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Difficulty, Persistence, Hope, Motivation, Perseverance
To believe a business impossible is the way to make it so. How many feasible projects have miscarried through despondency, and been strangled in their birth by a cowardly imagination.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Courage to Begin
We must not let go manifest truths because we cannot answer all questions about them.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Truth
Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age. They support us under solitude, and keep us from becoming a burden to ourselves. They help us to forget the crossness of men and things, compose our cares and our passions, and lay our disappointments asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Books, Reading
Idleness is an inlet to disorder, and makes way for licentiousness. — People who have nothing to do are quickly tired of their own company.
—Jeremy Collier
Topics: Self-Discovery, Disorder, Idleness
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Richard Hooker English Theologian, Political Theorist
Beilby Porteus Bishop of London
Sydney Smith English Preacher
William Cowper English Anglican Poet
William Ralph Inge English Anglican Clergyman
John Wilkins English Anglican Clergyman
Frances Ridley Havergal English Anglican Poet
F. L. Lucas English Literary Critic
William Ernest Henley English Poet
John Ruskin English Art Critic