Joseph Milner

Joseph Milner (1744–1797), an English evangelical divine, has a reputation particularly for his work on The History of the Church of Christ (1794–1809).

Life He was born at Leeds and educated at Leeds Grammar School and Catharine Hall, Cambridge. On graduation he went to Thorp Arch, West Yorkshire as assistant in a school kept by Christopher Atkinson, the vicar of the parish, received holy orders, and became Atkinson's curate. At Thorp Arch he made a lifelong friendship with the son of the vicar, Miles Atkinson, who subsequently became a leader of the evangelical party and vicar of St Paul's, Leeds.

Still in deacon's orders Milner left Thorp Arch to become headmaster of Hull Grammar School. There his pupils included William Dealtry, Samuel Marsden, George Pryme, Thomas Perronet Thompson, and Peter William Watson.

Milner was in 1768 elected afternoon lecturer at Holy Trinity Church, Hull. He now paid for the education of his brother Isaac Milner. In 1770 he became a follower of the rising evangelical school, suspected of Methodism, and the nature of his congregation at the High Church changed. He also undertook the charge of North Ferriby. Hull became a centre of evangelicalism. A controversy ensued, and the Milner's work had a new edition, published by the Rev. Thomas Grantham in 1847. and the second (1809), edited by the Rev. W. Richardson. These two were later republished together. A third volume (1823) was edited by the Rev. John Fawcett, and a fourth (1830), On the Epistles to the Seven Churches, the Millennium, the Church Triumphant, and the 130th Psalm, by Edward Bickersteth. In 1855 Milner's Essentials of Christianity, theoretically and practically considered, which had been left in manuscript, and had been revised by his brother, was edited for the Religious Tract Society by Mary Milner, the orphan niece of whom Joseph Milner had taken charge, and writer of her uncle Isaac's Life.