a) One who abhors.
Be they what they may, the barbarities of the Catholics of those times had their limits: but of this abhorrer of Catholic barbarities, the barbarity has, in respect of the number of intended victims, no limits other than those of time.
The “even be killed” is not comic, for Thoreau the individualist must have found it in theory as difficult to imagine himself dying for others as Thoreau the abhorrer of violence found it difficult to imagine himself killing another individual.
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