There are yet two names among the clerical leaders of the.  Evangelical party in the last century which were at least as influential as any which have been mentioned.  The two brothers, Joseph and Isaac Milner, were both in their different ways very notable men.

Joseph Milner, the elder brother (1744-1797), lived a singularly uneventful life.  After having taken a good degree at Cambridge, he was appointed, at a very early age, headmaster of the grammar school at Hull, in which town he spent the remainder of his comparatively short life.  He was in course of time made Vicar of North Ferriby, a village near Hull; and, first, lecturer, and then, only a few weeks before his death, Vicar, of Holy Trinity, the parish church of Hull.  Both his scholastic and ministerial careers were successful and useful, but do not call for any particular notice.  His Calvinistic views rendered him for a time unpopular, but he outlived his unpopularity, and died, at the age of fifty-three, generally respected, as he deserved to be.

But it is as a writer that Joseph Milner claims our chief regard.  His ‘Church History’ may contend with Scott’s ‘Commentary,’ for the first place among the Evangelical literature of the last century.  The plan of this important work was a happy and an original one—­original, that is, so far as execution was concerned; for the first idea was not original—­it was suggested by a fragment written by Newton at Olney.  Having observed with regret that most Church histories dwelt mainly, if not exclusively, upon the disputes of Christians, upon the various heresies and schisms which in all ages have distracted the Christian Church, Milner felt that they were calculated to impress their readers with a very unfavourable view of the Christian religion, as if the chief result of that religion had been to set men at variance with one another.[822] Mosheim, the fullest historian of the Church in that day, seemed to Milner a notable offender in this respect.  Milner therefore purposed to write a ‘History of the Church of Christ,’ the main object of which should be to set forth the blessed effects which Christianity had produced in all, even the darkest ages, and which should touch but slightly and incidentally, and only so far as the subject absolutely required it, upon the heresies and disputes which formed the staple of most Church histories.  His history, in fact, was to be a history of real not nominal Christians.  He thought that too much had been said about ecclesiastical wickedness, and that Deists and Sceptics had taken advantage of this against Christians.  Such a work was a ‘desideratum,’ and had the execution been equal to the conception, it would have been simply invaluable.  If genuine piety, thorough honesty, a real desire to recognise good wherever it could be found, and a vast amount of information, in the amassing of which he was aided by a wonderfully tenacious memory and great industry, were sufficient