Sigalion in the Shield of Croesiades or Apologetic Dialogue for the Mystery of Detected Syncretism

all those things can appear fictitious, you will nevertheless concede the power of fiction, which the wisest of fools, Thomas More, assumed for himself—with no one easily reproaching him—in composing his Utopia, which the initiates of all sciences have considered permissible for themselves to use for unfolding abstruse matters. Imagine that there is some such polity in the world, which, divided by religions, unites by this art—which Crœsus Lydus has provided in outline. That art (with the name borrowed from the Cretans) we will call Syncretism, that is, an Art, Invention, or Political Theology, which, stirred up by the fear and danger of a foreign enemy, composes three sects of religions—mythic, physical, and Jewish—distracted by opinions about GOD and modes of worship and the explanation of terms, and hence spilled into contentions, by the persuasion of one symbol for all, with a pledge of all minds made to this one point, relegating the controversies about matters not necessary to faith, about modes of worship, and about terms, to the schools of experts, with a tolerance of free and contrary sense regarding these things, until all are reduced to clarity by disputing, through dialysis dissolution and systasis re-establishment, not solid, and not enduring over time. If I shall prove that this definition squares entirely with the new modern inventions of the Irenicists, will you not carry away the glory of silence? And I, will I not have the case finished? You have received what reason, with Solon as the Interpreter of the Greeks, thinks of this art; receive now the judgment breathed down from heaven, which cannot deceive, the oracle of the heralds, to which all that Sophos wisdom which the Stoa of the Greeks marveled at, the Peripatetics burned for, the grove of the Academy sang of, and the whole Orient esteemed, is nothing but a drop to the ocean. That is indeed Apostolic and Pauline, with which the whole island of Crete once resounded. The sound of his voice, long since placed among the Celestials, and his pen will relate it. It is for us to attend, to venerate, to follow. But first it will be worth the effort to have explained the state of the Cretan religion—that which abhorred paganism—so that everyone may easily understand what the Divine Wise Man means. Exotic, and indeed dual, religion found a nest and habitation in the Cretan Island, both so hedged about by paganism as it was, and thus hateful and detestable; (a) Ve-

(a) See Christeida, Act 1, Phenomenon 2, where you may find all these things deduced more fully. Hugo Grotius, the prince of the syncretists, thinks too honorably of the Jewish religion, even the modern one, saying in his On the Truth of the Christian Religion, Book 1, that the Jewish religion, which for a long time has been deprived of all human aids, nay, in fact...