An Excerpt

From The History of Pendennis, Book II, Vol. 3, by William Makepeace Thackeray

“What I argue here is, that I will not persecute. Make a faith or a dogma absolute, and persecution becomes a logical consequence; and Dominic burns a Jew, or Calvin an Arian, or Nero a Christian, or Elizabeth or Mary a Papist or a Protestant; or their father both or either, according to his humor; and acting without any pangs of remorse, - but on the contrary, with strict notions of duty fulfilled. Make dogma absolute, and to inflict or suffer death becomes easy and necessary; and Mohomet’s soldiers shouting ‘Paradise! Paradise!’ and dying on the Christian spears, are not more or less praiseworthy than the same men slaughtering a town full of Jews, or cutting off the heads of all prisoners who would not acknowledge that there was but one prophet of God.”