While Edmund Burke was writing in a specific context and to a specific subject in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, the following insight certainly imparts wisdom to the church in her ministry to the world (pastors and laymen alike), and rightly challenges the tendency toward a censorious spirit.

It is undoubtedly true, though it may seem paradoxical; but in general, those who are habitually employed in finding and displaying faults, are unqualified for the work of reformation: because their minds are not only unfurnished with patterns of the fair and good, but by habit they come to take no delight in the contemplation of those things. By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little. It is therefore not wonderful, that they should be indisposed and unable to serve them.