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 was, he showed a generous appreciation of the real good which existed in the Church of Rome:  a most unusual liberality in theologians of the eighteenth century—­High Church as well as Low.  He warned his readers most seasonably, that they ’should not be prejudiced against the real Church, because she then [in the time of Gregory I.] wore a Roman garb,’ for ’superstition to a certain degree may co-exist with the spirit of the Gospel.’  And he certainly acted up to the spirit of his warning.  Of course, his chief heroes are those who were more or less adverse to the claims of the Roman See, such as Grossteste, Bradwardine, Wickliff, and Jerome of Prague.  But he can fully appreciate the merits of an Anselm, for instance, whose ’humble and penitent spirit consoles the soul with a glance of Christian faith in Christ;’[825] of Bernard, of whom he writes, ’There is not an essential doctrine of the Gospel which he did not embrace with zeal, defend by argument, and adorn by his life;’[826] of Bede, who ’alone knew more of true religion, both doctrinal and practical, than numbers of ecclesiastics put together at this day.’  And he owns that ’our ancestors were undoubtedly much indebted, under God, to the Roman See.’[827]