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Quotation by (None):
Tolerance is not the opposite of intolerance, but the
counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. One assumes to itself
the right of withholding the liberty of conscience, the other
of granting it. One is the pope armed with fire and faggot,
and the other the pope granting and selling indulgences. The
former is church and state and the latter church and traffic.
"But toleration can be viewed under a much stronger light.
Man worships not himself but his maker and the liberty of
conscience which he claims is not for the service of himself
but of his God. Toleration, therefore, does not come
between man and man, nor between church and church, nor
between one denomination and another, but between man
and God; between the being who worships, and the being
who is worshipped. And by the same act of assumed
authority which it tolerates man to pay his worship, it
blasphemously and presumptuously tolerates the Almighty to receive it.
Type: Prose
Context: Favorite
