Carlisle was born in a time when, according to Edward, it was commonplace to prosecute groups of different people or beings simply because one’s religion or culture said to do so. Edward very specifically leaves out the “why” when he mentions Carlisle hunting these groups down—the reason he went along with it is because that’s just how it was at the time. Interestingly, Edward also notes that Carlisle hunted werewolves. The werewolves were seen as evil in 17th-century England, while the werewolves in La Push obviously don’t see themselves as evil. When Carlisle himself was forced into becoming a vampire, he was suddenly that which he had been taught to hate.