Universal Mother, (saying) that through her he had made both the Angels and Archangels; and that the world was fabricated by the Angels.  Then the Angels in envy cast her down among them, for they did not wish, he says, to be called fabrications.  For which cause, forsooth, they induced her into many female bodies and into that of the famous Helen, through whom the Trojan War arose.

     It was on her account also, he said, that he himself had descended,
     to free her from the chains they had laid upon her, and to offer to
     men salvation through a system of knowledge peculiar to himself.

And that in his descent he had undergone transformation, so as not to be known to the Angels that manage the establishment of the world.  And that he had appeared in Judaea as a man, although he was not a man, and that he had suffered, though not at all suffering, and that the Prophets were the ministers of the Angels.  And he admonished those that believed on him not to pay attention to them, and not to tremble at the threats of the Law, but, as being free, to do whatever they would.  For it was not by good actions, but by grace they would gain salvation.

For which cause, indeed, those of his association ventured on every kind of licentiousness, and practised every kind of magic, fabricating love philtres and spells, and all the other arts of sorcery, as though in pursuit of divine mysteries.  And having prepared his (Simon’s) statue in the form of Zeus, and Helen’s in the likeness of Athena, they burn incense and pour out libations before them, and worship them as gods, calling themselves Simonians.

III.—­The Simon of the Legends.

The so-called Clementine Literature: 

A. Recognitiones.  Text:  Rufino Aquilei Presb.  Interprete (curante E.G.  Gersdorf); Lipsiae, 1838.

Homiliae.  Text:  Bibliotheca Patrum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Selecta, Vol.  I. (edidit Albertus Schwegler); Tubingensis, Stuttgartiae, 1847.

B. Constitutiones.  Text:  SS.  Patrum qui Temporibus Apostolicis Floruerunt Opera (edidit J.B.  Cotelerius); Amsteladami, 1724.

A. The priority of the two varying accounts, in the Homilies and Recognitiones, of the same story is in much dispute, but this is a question of no importance in the present enquiry.  The latest scholarship is of the opinion that “the Clementines are unmistakably a production of the sect of the Ebionites."[61] The Ebionites are described as: