What is essential to extensive religious persecution?
Ecclesiastical control of the civil power, or a union of church and state. 8. Since persecution is invariably wrong, and the persecutor is generally in the wrong on religious subjects, what must be true of persecuting governments? They likewise must be in the wrong. NOTES.-“There are many who do not seem to be sensible that all violence in religion is irreligious, and that, whoever is wrong, the persecutor cannot be right.”- Thomas Clarke. “Have not almost all the governments in the world always been in the wrong on religious subjects?”- Macaulay. “Do not the Scriptures clearly show that they who persecute are generally in the wrong, and they who suffer persecution in the right,- that the majority has always been on the side of falsehood, and the minority only on the side of truth?”- Luther. “Religion was intended to bring peace on earth and good will towards men, and whatever tends to hatred and persecution, however correct in the letter, must be utterly wrong in the spirit.”- Henry V
