John Milner (nonjuror)
John Milner (1628–1702) was an English clergyman, known as a nonjuring minister, scholar and opponent of John Locke. Life. Milner was second son of John Milner and Mary, daughter of Gilbert Ramsden, born at Skircoat, in the parish of Halifax, and was baptised 10 February 1628. He was educated at the Halifax grammar school and entered at Christ's College, Cambridge, 21 June 1642. He probably left without a degree ahead of the parliamentary visitation of the university. Returning to Halifax he made the acquaintance of John Lake, whose sister he seems to have married. Milner was  probably with Lake at Oldham in 1651; it has been inferred that he was schoolmaster at Chadderton appointed in August 1641. Lake's friend was preaching at Oldham as late as 1654. Milner is said to have subsequently returned to Halifax, and at the Restoration was given the curacy of Beeston in the parish of Halifax by Lake, who had then become vicar of Leeds. In 1662 he obtained the degree of B.D. at Cambridge by royal letters. His petition for his degree states that he had been deprived of a good benefice during the rebellion. In the same year  he was made minister of St. John's, Leeds, was inducted vicar of Leeds 4 August 1673, and elected prebendary of Ripon 29 March 1681. At the Glorious Revolution of 1688 he joined the nonjurors, was deprived of all his preferments, and retired to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he lived in comparative ease. He died 16 February 1702, and was buried in the college chapel on 19 February. His only son, Thomas, vicar of Bexhill, Sussex, proved a great benefactor to Magdalene College, Cambridge, under his will dated 5 September 1721. Works. Milner published: Two anonymous pamphlets on  Bishop John Lake's 'Dying Profession,' have been assigned to Milner, or Robert Jenkin. They were published at London in 1690. Milner left in manuscript a translation in Latin of the "Targum" on the First and Second Book of Chronicles, and other works on Scriptural chronology and current ecclesiastical controversies. The "Account of Mr. Locke's Religion" includes moderate and shrewd criticisms of Locke's detailed reasoning.