Daily Inspiration Quote by Anthony Collins

A shot across the bow of inherited faith, Collins frames belief not as a cozy inheritance but as a personal liability. The line is built on obligation: "I am obliged" sounds almost legal, a reminder that conviction isn’t a mood but a responsibility. He turns religion into an accountability system where you cannot outsource the verdict. The second sentence tightens the screw: no proxy, no spiritual nepotism, no borrowed certainty. If salvation (or moral legitimacy) exists, it has to be earned in the only currency that counts to an Enlightenment mind: your own assent.

The subtext is a polite demolition of priestly authority and social conformity. Collins isn’t merely defending private opinion; he’s attacking the infrastructure that makes beliefs transferable - family tradition, church membership, deference to learned men. The phrase "No man's belief" is deliberately flattening: bishop and beggar are equal here, because the real target is the idea that truth can be mediated by status. It’s a prototype of the modern insistence that sincerity is not enough; you need epistemic ownership.

Context sharpens the intent. Writing in an England still managing the aftershocks of civil war, sectarian conflict, and state religion, Collins belonged to the freethinking wing of the early 1700s, championing reason, toleration, and skepticism toward revelation. The quote functions as both ethical admonition and political statement: if belief is strictly personal, coercion and compulsory orthodoxy become not just cruel but pointless.