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Towsey, Mark
2019.
Reading History in Britain and America, c.1750–c.1840.
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Joseph Milner's Evangelical Church History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011
Extract
‘The Church History of Joseph Milner is one of those books which may perish with some revolution of the moral and religious character of the English race, but hardly otherwise.’ Sir James Stephen's prophecy reads alarmingly to-day when the book has vanished even from the dustiest and highest shelf of the rectory library. But it was of Milner's History that Cowper also wrote enthusiastically ‘the facts are incontestible, the grand observations upon them are all irrefragible, and the style, in my judgment, incomparably better than that of Robertson or Gibbon’. Translated into German, Swedish and Spanish, relayed to Grundtwigian pietist circles through the histories of Rasmus Sørensen, Milner was read as far north as Greenland and as far east as the Volga. His book was instrumental in converting half a dozen Members of Parliament. It was long considered—as Milner intended it to be—as the replacement of Mosheim's famous History, and as such it was prescribed reading in the educated Evangelical home and beyond. In 1847 Julius Hare regarded it as still ‘the main, if not the sole, source from which a large portion of our Church derive their notions of ecclesiastical history’. Ironically, it was from Milner's soundly Evangelical pages that young Newman got his first love of the Fathers. The History of the Church of Christ must thus be reckoned as a book of first importance in the religious history of early nineteenth-century England. Yet, save for a few pages in Abbey and Overton (still the most reliable survey of Evangelicalism, after eighty years) Milner's book is now unknown.
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References
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page 177 note 2 J. Milner, History, ii. 459.
page 177 note 3 Ibid., 466.
page 178 note 1 J. Milner, History, ii. 506.
page 178 note 2 Ibid., 319.
page 178 note 3 J. Milner, Essays on Several Religious Subjects, Chiefly Tending to Illustrate the Scripture-Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, 1789.
page 178 note 4 J. Milner, op. cit., 167.
page 178 note 5 J. Milner, Gibbon's Account of Christianity considered: together with some Strictures on Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 1781.
page 178 note 6 J. Milner, History, i. 533. Milner puts the declension of primitive Christianity at a rather earlier date than the reign of Constantine, the usual landmark in protestant histories of the Early Church.
page 179 note 1 J. Milner, History, i. 220–1; i. (2nd ed.), 228 n.
page 179 note 2 Op. cit., i. 163, 223.
page 179 note 3 Op. cit., i. 220–1.
page 179 note 4 Op. cit., ii. 501.
page 179 note 5 Op. cit., iii. 35 ff.
page 180 note 1 Op. cit., iii. 223–4, 233, 269.
page 180 note 2 Op. cit., iii. 403 ff; 433. See T. Taylor (a Methodist Preacher), History of the Waldenses and Albigenses, 1793.
page 180 note 3 J. Milner, History, iv. 180 ff.
page 180 note 4 Ibid., 104–5.
page 180 note 5 Ibid., 119.
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page 181 note 5 Ibid., 448, 523.
page 181 note 6 Op. cit., iii. iv, 91.
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page 181 note 8 Op. cit., i. 503.
page 181 note 9 Op. cit., ii. 102.
page 182 note 1 Milner, J., Sermons on Colossians, 1841, 58–9.Google Scholar Milner's judgment on Benedict is curiously harsh, so too his opinion of Francis and Dominic. One might have imagined that he would recognise in the simple, popular piety of the Friars some resemblance to other medieval cults (e.g. the Waldenses) which have attracted protestant historians. But no. He writes of the ‘pride and deceit’ of Francis, of Dominic's lack of humility and the way in which their followers buttressed the papal Antichrist and completed the ‘MECHANICAL’ scheme of Roman devotion: History, iv. 5–27.
page 182 note 2 J. Milner, History, iv. Preface.
page 182 note 3 W. Robertson, History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V, 1769, ii. 78 ff., 118.
page 182 note 4 Ibid., ii. 99. To be fair to Robertson, he covers himself by claiming that doctrinal topics are not his concern, but are left to the ecclesiastical historian. See Wilberforce on Robertson's ‘phlegmatic’ account of the Reformation: A Practical View, 1797, 386–7.
page 183 note 1 Blackburne, F., Works, 1805, iv. 382.Google Scholar
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page 183 note 3 J. Milner, History, iv. xii.
page 183 note 4 Brilioth, Y., The Anglican Revival, 1925, 35.Google Scholar
page 184 note 1 ‘It is of no consequence with respect to my plan, nor of much importance I believe in its own nature, to what EXTERNAL Church (real Christians) belonged’: J. Milner, History, i. ix.
page 184 note 2 J. Milner, History, i. (2nd ed.), 427 ff.
page 184 note 3 Ibid., 400 ff.
page 184 note 4 Op. cit., iii. 497. Alexander Kilham cited the Waldenses to justify breaking from Methodism in 1796: Methodist Monitor, 1796, ii. 232 ff.
page 184 note 5 J. Milner, op. cit., iv. 1051–2, 1103.
page 184 note 6 See Merritt Y. Hughes, ‘Milton's Treatment of Reformation History in the Tenure of Kings and Magistrates’, in R. F. Jones (and others) The Seventeenth Century.
page 184 note 7 E.g. Cockin, J., Reflections after Reading, 1843, 135Google Scholar, on Milner's ‘SPIRIT OF CHURCHISM’; R. Hill, Journey through the North of England, 1799, 9; Haweis, T., Impartial and Succint History of the Church of Christ, 1800.Google Scholar Haweis's title perhaps shows an intention to correct the bias of the Milner brothers to the Establishment of which he disapproved. Haweis's History is a good deal less kind to medieval religion and a good deal more approving of early schismatics. Compare Milner's approval of Cyprian quoted above, with Haweis's ‘I would rather be under the curses with Novatian than utter them with Cyprian’; History, i. 246. See Wood, A. Skevington, Thomas Haweis, 1956Google Scholar, for a good survey of Haweis's History. In two pamphlets Isaac Milner vigorously combated Haweis's criticism of the Anglican bias of Joseph Milner's History.
page 185 note 1 Knox, A., Remains, 1834–7Google Scholar, i. 256 ff.; iv. 252.
page 185 note 2 Proby, W. H., Annals of the Low Church Party, 1888, i. 203.Google Scholar
page 185 note 3 Newman, J. H., An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1845, 5.Google Scholar
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page 187 note 1 J. Milner, History, iii. 120. Milner's concept of history had much in common with that of the Puritans. See Woodhouse, A. S. P., Puritanism and Liberty, 1938, 50: ‘… deterioration is its note, but deterioration relieved by sudden interventions of God in behalf of truth and righteousness, as seen in the prophets of old, preëminently in the earthly ministry of Christ, and recently, after twelve hundred years of increasing darkness, in the Reformation’. This was the direct antithesis of Burke's view. For the Puritans ‘history is not “the known march of the ordinary providence of God”: it is protracted wandering from the way, relieved by sudden interventions of God's extraordinary providence’.Google Scholar
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