Henry Hart Milman (1791 – 1868) was an English historian and ecclesiastic. He was a professor of poetry at Oxford (1821 – 1831) and dean of St Paul’s (1849). He wrote a number of verse dramas and various historical works.
Many Christian theologians have supposed that the debased condition—moral and spiritual—of the Eastern Church must have alienated the hearts of many and driven them to seek a healthier spiritual atmosphere in the faith of Islam which had come to them in all the vigour of new-born zeal. For example, Dean Milman asks:
“What was the state of the Christian world in the provinces exposed to the first invasion of Mohammedanism?
Sect opposed to sect, clergy wrangling with clergy upon the most abstruse and metaphysical points of doctrine.
The orthodox, the Nestorians, the Eutychians, the Jacobites were persecuting each other with unexhausted animosity;
and it is not judging too severely the evils of religious controversy to suppose that many would rejoice in the degradation of their adversaries under the yoke of the unbeliever, rather than make common cause with them in defense of the common Christianity.
In how many must this incessant disputation have shaken the foundations of their faith!
It had been wonderful if thousands had not, in their weariness and perplexity, sought refuge from these interminable and implacable controversies in the simple, intelligible truth of the Divine Unity, though purchased by the acknowledgment of the prophetic mission of Mohammed.”1
1. History of Latin Christianity, vol. 2. pp. 216-17.