Young men of the Church of England, I ask you to gather up these facts, and treasure them in your memories. They are facts. They cannot be gainsaid. Treasure them up, I repeat. Look back a century, and then look around you, and then judge for yourselves whether you ought not to be thankful.
Beware, I beseech you, of that tribe of men who would fain persuade you to forsake the Church of England, and separate from her communion. There is a generation of murmurers and complainers in the present day, who seem to revel in picking holes—a generation that seems to forget that fault-finding is the easiest task in all the world—a generation that has no eyes to see the healthy parts in our body ecclesiastic, but has a wonderfully quick and morbid scent for detecting its sores—a generation that is mighty to scatter, but impotent to build—a generation that would persuade churchmen to strain at gnats, but finds no difficulty itself in swallowing camels—a generation that would have you pull the old house down, but cannot offer you so much as a tent in its place: of all such men, I say solemnly and affectionately—of all such men, I warn you to beware. Listen not to them. Have no friendship with them. Avoid them. Turn from them. Pass away.
Let us not leave the good old ship, the Church of England, until we have some better reason than can at present be seen. What though she be old and weather-beaten! What though, in some respects, she may want repair! What though some of the crew be not to be depended on! Still, with all her faults, the old ship is in far better trim than she was a century ago. Let us acknowledge her faults, and hope they may yet be amended. But still, with all her faults, let us stick by the ship!
When the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England are repealed, and the Prayer Book and Homilies so altered as to be unprotestantized—when regeneration and justification by faith are forbidden to be preached in her pulpits—when the Queen, Lords and Commons, and laity, have assented to these changes—in short, when the Gospel is driven out of the Establishment—then, and not till then, it will be time for you and me to go out; but, till then, I say, Let us stick by the Church!