carnal presence, He said to the Jews:  “If ye believe Moses, ye should also believe me; for he wrote about me."[52] There are many other arguments also to oppose to the contention of the sorcerer.  For how will obscene things give life, if it were not a conception of daemons?  When the Lord himself answers in the Gospel to those who say unto him:  “If such is the case of the man and the woman, it is not good to marry.”  But He said unto them:  “All do not hold this; for there are eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of the heavens."[53] And He showed that natural abstinence from union is the gift of the kingdom of the heavens; and again in another place He says with respect to righteous marriage—­which Simon of his own accord basely corrupting treats according to his own desires—­“Whom God has joined together let no man put asunder."[54]

6.  And how unaware is again the vagabond that he confutes himself by his own babbling, not knowing what he gives out?  For after saying that the Angels were produced by him through his Thought, he goes on to say that he changed his form in every heaven, to escape their notice in his descent.  Consequently he avoided them through fear.  And how did the babbler fear the Angels whom he had himself made?  And how will not the dissemination of his error be found by the intelligent to be instantly refuted by everyone, when the scripture says:  “In the beginning[55] God made the heaven and the earth"?[56] And in unison with this word, the Lord in the Gospel says, as though to his own Father:  “O Father, Lord of heaven and earth."[57] If, therefore, the maker of heaven and earth is naturally God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, all that the slanderer Simon says is vain; to wit, the defective production of the world by the Angels, and all the rest he has babbled about in addition to his world of Daemons, and he has deceived those who have been led away by him.

ix.  Hieronymus (In Matthaeum, IV. xxiv. 5).  Text:  S.  Eusebii Hieronymi Comment.; Migne Patrol.  Grec., VII. col. 176.

Of whom there is one Simon, a Samaritan, whom we read of in the Acts of the Apostles, who said he was some Great Power.  And among the rest of the things written in his volumes, he proclaimed as follows: 

     “I am the Word of God; I am the glorious one, I the Paraclete, the
     Almighty, I the whole of God.”

x.  Theodoretus (Haereticarum Fabularum Compendium, I. i.).  Text:  Opera Omnia (ex recensione Jacobi Simondi, denuo edidit Joann.  Ludov.  Schulze); Halae, 1769.