What criticisms did Jeremy Collier make about Restoration comedy?

Jeremy Collier’s 1698 tract, A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, launched a significant public campaign against the Restoration comedy of the late 17th century.12

Collier, an English bishop and leader of the Nonjurors, criticized prominent dramatists—including William Congreve, John Dryden, and William Wycherley—for several specific moral failings:3

• Indecency and Profanity: He censured the plays for their use of profane language and general indecency.3
• Abuse of the Clergy: He condemned the frequent mockery of religious figures within these works.3
• Undermining Morality: Collier argued that the plays promoted vice through the sympathetic presentation of immoral characters.3

At the heart of his critique was the belief that "the business of plays is to recommend Vertue, and discountenance Vice". This stood in direct opposition to the prevailing view held by playwrights like Congreve, who maintained that the purpose of a comic poet was to paint the vices and follies of humankind, often through satire and ridicule, rather than to serve as a didactic tool for moral instruction.2