“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.”
Saturday, October 3, 2009
An Excerpt
“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.”
Labels:
excerpts,
novelists,
Pendennis,
William Makepeace Thackeray
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