Note 165 — Chapter XVIII

If Mr. Venn, of Holloway, Islington, had been acquainted with this true history of the gradual change wrought in the mind of Mr. Milner, he would not have asserted, as we find he has done, in the Life of his grandfather, that “Mr. Milner was one of those evangelical labourers who derived their view of the truth directly from the word of God, who were independent of the Methodists, and nearly contemporaneous with them, and whose labours had an immediate and remarkable influence upon the clergy of the Church of England.” This is not the only error Mr. Venn commits in the long list of names prefixed to his grandfather’s correspondence. It would be easy to prove that the light which then fell upon the Church was poured through the channel of Methodism.