A comparison of the surviving fragments of Basilides, moreover, with the outline of his system in Irenaeus-Hippolytus (Syntagma) shows that the account given by the Fathers of the Church is also in the highest degree untrustworthy.
Closely related to this is the account in the Syntagma of Hippolytus, which is preserved in Epiphanius, Haer.
Gassendi, in his De vita, moribus, et doctrina Epicuri (Lyons, 1647), and his Syntagma philosophiae Epicuri, systematized the doctrine.
In 1655 Usher published his last work, De Graeca LXX Interpretum Versione Syntagma.
In the same year the more important Syntagma philosophiae Epicuri (Lyons, 1649; Amsterdam, 1684) was published.
In the second part of the Syntagma, the physics, there is more that deserves attention; but here, too, appears in the most glaring manner the inner contradiction between Gassendi's fundamental principles.
The chief uncertainty is as to whether he knew Justin's Syntagma, and also as to whether he had access to the Philosophumena of Hippolytus in their complete form.
The Halberstadt organ, about which so much has been written, was, according to Praetorius (Syntagma musicum, Wolffenbi ttel, 1618), built in 1361, and repaired or rebuilt 1495.
The Syntagma is thus an essentially unsystematic work, and clearly exhibits the main characteristics of Gassendi's genius.
The Syntagma philosophicum, in fact, is one of those eclectic systems which unite, or rather place in juxtaposition, irreconcilable dogmas from various schools of thought.
Whether this last account, or that given by Irenaeus and in the Syntagma of Hippolytus, represents the original system of Basilides, has been the subject of a long controversy.