In 1698 Collier produced his famous Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage...
In that year the Great Fire of London, following on the Great Plague, roused the superstitious fears of the people, and the House of Commons embodied the general feeling in a bill against atheism and profaneness.
On the 17th of October it was ordered that the committee to which the bill was referred " should be empowered to receive information touching such books as tend to atheism, blasphemy and profaneness, or against the essence and attributes of God, and in particular the book published in the name of one White, 1 and the book of Mr Hobbes called the Leviathan, and to report the matter with their opinion to the House."