Without a single lecture, either public or private, either Christian or Protestant, without any academical subscription, without any episcopal ordination, I was left by light of my catechism to grope my way to the chapel and communion table, where I was admitted without question how far or by what means I might be qualified to receive the sacrament.

Such almost incredible neglect was productive of the worst mischiefs." What did Gibbon mean by this last sentence?
Did he, when he wrote it, towards the end of his life, regret the want of early religious instruction?
Nothing leads us to think so, or to suppose that his subsequent loss of faith was a heavy grief, supported, but painful to bear.

His mind was by nature positive, or even pagan, and he had nothing of what the Germans call _religiositaet_ in him.

Still there is a passage in his Memoirs where he oddly enough laments not having selected the _fat slumbers of the Church_ as an eligible profession.

Did he reflect that perhaps the neglect of his religious education at Oxford had deprived him of a bishopric or a good deanery, and the learned leisure which such positions at that time conferred on those who cared for it?
He could not feel that he was morally, or even spiritually, unfit for an office filled in his own time by such men as Warburton and Hurd.