A writer came forward as moderator(427) between Collins and his opponents, who himself afterwards became still more noted, by directing an attack on miracles, similar to that of Collins on prophecy;—the unhappy Woolston.(428) A fellow of a college(429) at Cambridge, in holy orders, he was for many years a diligent student of the fathers, and imbibed from them an extravagant attachment to the allegorical sense of scripture. Finding that his views met with no support in that reasoning age, he broke out into unmeasured insult and contempt against his brother clergy, as slaves to the letter of scripture.(430) Deprived of his fellowship,(431) and distracted by penury, he extended his hatred from the ministers to the religion which they ministered. And when, in reply to Collins’s assertion, that Christianity reposed solely on prophecy, the Christian apologists fell back on miracles, he wrote in 1727 and the two following years his celebrated _Discourses on the Miracles_. (22) They were published as pamphlets; in each one of which he examined a few of the miracles of Christ, trying to show such inconsistencies as to make it appear that they must be regarded as untrustworthy if taken literally; and hence he advocated a figurative interpretation of them; asserting that the history of the life of Jesus is an emblematical representation of his spiritual life in the soul of man.(432) The gospels thus become a system of mystical theology, instead of a literal history. In defence of this method he claimed the example of the ancient church,(433) ignoring the fact that the fathers admitted a literal as well as a figurative meaning. Whether he really retained towards the close of his life the spiritual interpretation,(434) or merely used it as an excuse for a more secure advance to the assault of the historic reality of scripture, is very uncertain.