the Religion of the Utopians_

As touching leagues they never make one with any nation, putting no
trust therein; seeing the more and holier ceremonies the league is knit
up with, the sooner it is broken. Who perchance would change their minds
if they lived here? But they be of opinion that no man should be
counted an enemy who hath done no injury, and that the fellowship of
nature is a strong league.

They count nothing so much against glory as glory gotten in war. And
though they do daily practise themselves in the discipline of war, they
go not to battle but in defence of their own country or their friends,
or to right some assured wrong. They are ashamed to win the victory with
much bloodshed, but rejoice if they vanquish their enemies by craft.
They set a great price upon the life or person of the enemy's prince and
of other chief adversaries, counting that they thereby save the lives of
many of both parts that had otherwise been slain; and stir up neighbour
peoples against them. They lure soldiers out of all countries to do
battle with them, and especially savage and fierce people called the
Zapoletes, giving them greater wages than any other nation will. But of
their own people they thrust not forth to battle any against his will;
yet if women be willing, they do in set field stand every one by her
husband's side, and each man is compassed about by his own kinsfolk; and
they be themselves stout and hardy and disdainful to be conquered. It is
hard to say whether they be craftier in laying ambush, or wittier in
avoiding the same. Their weapons be arrows, and at handstrokes not
swords but pole-axes; and engines for war they devise and invent
wondrous wittily.

There be divers kinds of religion. Some worship for God the sun, some
the moon; there be that give worship to a man that was once of the most
excellent virtue; some believe that there is a certain godly power
unknown, everlasting, incomprehensible; but all believe that there is
one God, Maker and Ruler of the whole world. But after they heard us
speak of Christ, with glad minds they agreed unto the same. And this is
one of their ancientest laws, that no man shall be blamed for reasoning
in the maintenance of his own religion, giving to every man free liberty
to believe what he would. Saving that none should conceive so base and
vile an opinion as to think that souls do perish with the body, or that
the world runneth at all adventures, governed by no divine