Collegial or Collegiate Bystem, a mode of exhibiting the relation of Church and State employed by Pnffendorf and Pfaff in Protestant Germany. The churches were regarded as being, after Constantine's time, legal corporations (collegia jfcka), with rights to form their creeds, conduct their worship, choose their presiding officer, admit and expel members ; to make and administer by-laws, correct such abuses as might creep in among them, call in the aid of the civil power if necessary, or in certain cases to leave the exerdse of these ri^ts to others. It was assumed that the rights originally belonging to the congregations, which had been in course of time usurped by the hierarchy, were restored to the congregations by the Reformation, and were left by the Reformed congregations to the dvfl authorities. According to this view, the civil au- thority would have a double power with regard to the Church, the jiu drca tacra, the right of superintend- ence and of patronage, which inheres in the secular authority, and the jt» m sacriSf the sum of the collegial rights in internal aflbirs of the Churcn, transferred to it (the secular government) as the representative of the congregations of the country. For some time this view was tngeAy made use of by most of the Protestant state governments, but in modem times it has more or less given way in every country to a sounder concep-
tion of the relation between Church and State.— Wet- zer u. Welte, Kirckm-Lex. ii, 667. See Church and Stats.
Collegianta, a party of the Remonstrants of Hol- land. It derived its name from the members calling their assemblies colleges. They rejected aU creeds, all regidar ministers, and all tests of communion and forms of ecclesiastical government. They are some- times caUed JRhmebergere, because they met twice a year at Rhinsberg, a village near Leyden. The Col- legiants were confined to Holland ; but some of their practices are followed by other religious bodies in oth- er countries, as by the Pl3rmouth Brethren (q. v.) in England.— MosheJm, Church Hittory, cent xvii, pt. ii, ch. vii.
Collegiate Chnroh. See Collegial or Col-
LBOIATB ChTROH.
Collier, leretDj, an English non-juror, was bom in 1660 at Stow-with-Quy, Cambridgeshire. He passed M. A. at Caius College, Cambrid^ in 1676, and ob- tained the living of Ampton, Sussex, which he resign- ed for the lectureship of Gray*s Inn, 1686. At the Revolution of 1688 he not only reftised the oaths, but was active in behalf of the dethroned monarch. In 1696 he was outlawed. At last he turned his talents to better ends, and made war on the licentiousness of the theatre. His first work on this subject was, A Short View of Ihe ImmoraUiy and Prqfanatete of the Stage (Lend. 1788, 8d ed. 8vo). The wits in vain op- posed him, and after a ten years* struggle, in which he wrote other books and pamphlets on the subject, he ac- complished his object. The rest of his life was spent in various literary labors. He was consecrated a non- juring bishop by Dr. Hicks in 1718, and died in 1726. Collier was a man of eminent abilities, but of small reasoning foculty. Besides the hooikB above named, he wrote Eccledastical Hittory of Great Britain (new edition, with Life of Collier, Lond. 1840, 9 vols. 8vo) ; Estajfs on Moral Svibjecta (Lond. 8 vols. 8vo) ; ffistoT' ical<, Geographicoif and Poetical Dictionary, from Mo- reri, with additions (Lond. 1701-27, 4 vols, fol.), be- sides numerous controversial tracts. — ^Macaulay, Hist, qf England, iii, 868 ; Life of Collier (prefixed to his Ec. History of England) ; Hook, Ecdes. Biography, iv, 187 ; Biographia Britannica, iv, 12.
Collier, Joseph Avery, a minister of the Re- formed Prcikestant Dutch Church, was bom at Plym- outh, Mass., Oct. 26, 1828, graduated at Rutgers Col- lege, New Brunswick, N. J., July, 1849, and at the theological seminary of the Reformed Dutch Church in that city, July, 1862. Died at Kingston, N. Y., Au- gust, 1864. He was a clear, methodical, persuasive, and eloquent preacher. His literary attainments were unusually large, and entirely consecrated to his min- istry. As a preacher to children and the young men he is entitled to the first rank. His public^ons were the following : The right Way, or the Gospel applied to the Intercourse of Individuals and Nations (a prize es- say on Peace,^^. Tract Society, N. T. 1864, of which over ten thousand copies have been circulated) : — The Christian Home, or Religion in the Family (prize essay, Presbyterian Board, Phila. 1869) i—The Young Man of the Bible (Am. Tract Soc. N. T. 1861) i—IAttle Crovms, and how to Coin them (N. Y. 1864 ; republished in Eng- land) I— Pleasant Paths fbr little Feet (Am. Tract Soc. N. Y. 1864) z—The Dawn of Heaven, or Ae Principles of ike heaiemly Life cgaplied to the earthly, a posthumous work, to which is prefixed a brief and just biographi- cal sketch by his brother. Rev. Ezra W. Collier (N. Y. 1866).
Collier, William, a Baptist minister, was bom in Scituate, Mass., Oct 11, 1771. He graduated at Brown University in 1797, studied theology under president Maxcy, and was licensed to preach in 1798. In 1799 he was ordained at Boston as minister at laige,
CX)LLIKrS
412
COLLN"
but Boon went as pastor to Newport, spent one jear there, and four as pastor of the First Baptist Church, New York. In 1804 he became pastor of the Baptist chnrch in Charlestown, Mass., where he remained six- teen years, a faithful and successful minister. In 1820, his health CeLiling, he resigned his charge, and removed to Boston, where he remained during the rest of his life, doing service as minister at large. He was a pioneer of the temperance reform, and from 1826 to 1828 edited the National Philanthrcpigt, the first temperance paper. He died March 29, 1848. Among . his literary labors were a Hymnrlmk^ a series of Ser- mom from living MiniaUrs (begun in 1827), editions of Saurin and of Andrew Fuller, and several occasion- al Sermons. — Sprague, AnnaU, vi, 376.