Excerpt from Concerning the Church: Course of Sermons To one who believes, as I do most firmly, that the Church is god's own society, His chosen instrument and organization for the regeneration of mankind through christ, and the ordinary channel of His gifts of grace, few things are more distressing than the ignorance, and, I may add, indifference of so many Churchmen as to what this same Church, of which they are members, is as to its mison d'em, its principles and constitution and claims on their allegiance. As far as my experience extends, not one Churchman in a thousand can give a valid reason, as distinguished from mere preferences, for his Churchmanship, or even say, often as he professes his faith in it, what he believes about the Holy Catholic Church.
And this is the more to be lamented because, as a rule, our separated brethren, both Roman and Genevan, can give some reasons, and often very specious and persuasive reasons, for being what they are and believingwhat they do. It is the more distressing because this ignorance of what the Church is, or of what our lord designed it to be, lies at the root of our unhappy and destructive divisions. It is only, in my humble opinion, because the teaching of Holy Scripture and of Christian antiquity on this subject has been so largely lost sight of or obscured that Dissent in its many forms has come to exist amongst us.
I am very far from suggesting, however, that Church men, or rather Church laymen, are entirely to blame for the present confusion and distress; at least an equal share of blame belongs to the clergy, who have, as I think it will be admitted, so seldom given definite and careful instruction on this cardinal question. I have said that not one layman in a thousand can give a con sistent and intelligent account of the Church; the main reason is that not one clergyman in a hundred ever explains its character and design. The ninety-nine have left their congregations to form their own conclusions on the subject, and this when it was morally certain, in the great majority of cases, that they could not arrive at right conclusions. For the exercise of private judgment is a delusion and a snare when we have only a part of the evidence before us, and when that part is very liable to be misconceived. An uninstructed decision may easily be worse than none at all.
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