he Evangelicals recommended was a religion only
fitted for persons of weak minds and imperfect education. Such sweeping
and indiscriminate censures of 'human learning' (at least of one
important branch of it) not only encouraged contemptuous opinions of
Evangelicalism among its enemies, but also tended to make many of its
friends think too lightly of those gifts which, after all, come as truly
from 'the Father of lights' as these which are more strictly termed
spiritual. It was a very convenient doctrine for those who could
certainly never have attained to any degree of intellectual eminence, to
think that they were quite on a level with those who could and did:
nay, that they had the advantage on their side because intellectual
eminence was a snare rather than a help to Christianity. It is all the
more provoking to find such passages as those which have been quoted
from Milner in Evangelical writings (and they are not uncommon) because
the Evangelical leaders themselves were very far indeed from being
deficient either in abilities or attainments. Perhaps none of them can
be classed among the first order of divines; but those who assert that
the Wesleys, Romaine, Newton, Scott, Cecil, and the Milners were fools
and ignoramuses, only show their own folly and ignorance.

Another defect of Milner as a historian is, that he is rather too
anxious 'to improve the occasion.' Whatever century he is treating of,
he always seems to have one eye steadily fixed upon the latter part of
the eighteenth century. He takes every possible and impossible
opportunity of dealing a sideblow to the Arminians and Schismatics of
his own day:[824] for Milner, though he was called a Methodist, was a
most uncompromising stickler for every point of Church order.

His Calvinism led him to give undue prominence to those Christians of
the past who held the same views. Thus, for instance, although the great
Bishop of Hippo richly deserves all the honour which a Church historian
can bestow upon him, yet surely he was not so immeasurably superior to
the other Fathers, that he should have 145 pages devoted to him, while
Chrysostom has only sixteen and Jerome only eleven. But 'the peculiar
work for which Augustine was evidently raised up by Providence, was to
restore the doctrines of divine grace to the Church.'

Having frankly owned these defects, we may now turn to the more pleasing
task of recognising Milner's real merits.

Strong Protestant as Milner