destroying,"[11] taking in an incorrect sense what Moses said, he declares that Fire is the Universal Principle, not understanding what was said, viz., not that “God is fire,” but “a fire burning and destroying.”  And thus he not only tears to pieces the Law of Moses, but also plunders from Heracleitus the obscure.[12] And Simon states that the Universal Principle is Boundless Power, as follows: 

“This is the writing of the revelation of Voice and Name from Thought, the Great Power, the Boundless.  Wherefore shall it be sealed, hidden, concealed, laid in the Dwelling of which the Universal Root is the foundation."[13]

And he says that man here below, born of blood, is the Dwelling, and that the Boundless Power dwells in him, which he says is the Universal Root.  And, according to Simon, the Boundless Power, Fire, is not a simple thing, as the majority who say that the four elements are simple have considered fire also to be simple, but that the Fire has a twofold nature; and of this twofold nature he calls the one side the concealed and the other the manifested, (stating) that the concealed (parts) of the Fire are hidden in the manifested, and the manifested produced by the concealed.

     This is what Aristotle calls “in potentiality” and “in actuality,”
     and Plato the “intelligible” and “sensible.”

And the manifested side of the Fire has all things in itself which a man can perceive of things visible, or which he unconsciously fails to perceive.  Whereas the concealed side is everything which one can conceive as intelligible, even though it escape sensation, or which a man fails to conceive.

And generally we may say, of all things that are, both sensible and intelligible, which he designates concealed and manifested, the Fire, which is above the heavens, is the treasure-house, as it were a great Tree, like that seen by Nabuchodonosor in vision, from which all flesh is nourished.  And he considers the manifested side of the Fire to be the trunk, branches, leaves, and the bark surrounding it on the outside.  All these parts of the great Tree, he says, are set on fire from the all-devouring flame of the Fire and destroyed.  But the fruit of the Tree, if its imaging has been perfected and it takes the shape of itself, is placed in the storehouse, and not cast into the Fire.  For the fruit, he says, is produced to be placed in the storehouse, but the husk to be committed to the Fire; that is to say, the trunk, which is generated not for its own sake but for that of the fruit.

10.  And this he says is what is written in the scripture:  “For the vineyard of the Lord Sabaoth is the house of Israel, and a man of Judah a well-beloved shoot."[14] And if a man of Judah is a well-beloved shoot, it is shown, he says, that a tree is nothing else than a man.  But concerning its sundering and dispersion, he says,