Simon Magus | Page 4

that Helen, on whose account the Trojan War arose; wherefore also

Stesichorus[8] was deprived of his sight when he spake evil of her in
his poems; and that afterwards when he repented and wrote what is
called a recantation, in which he sang her praises, he recovered his
sight. So she, transmigrating from body to body, and thereby also
continually undergoing indignity, last of all even stood for hire in a
brothel; and she was the "lost sheep."
3. Wherefore also he himself had come, to take her away for the first
time, and free her from her bonds, and also to guarantee salvation to
men by his "knowledge." For as the Angels were mismanaging the
world, since each of them desired the sovereignty, he had come to set
matters right; and that he had descended, transforming himself and
being made like to the Powers and Principalities and Angels; so that he
appeared to men as a man, although he was not a man; and was thought
to have suffered in Judaea, although he did not really suffer. The
Prophets moreover had spoken their prophecies under the inspiration of
the Angels who made the world; wherefore those who believed on him
and his Helen paid no further attention to them, and followed their own
pleasure as though free; for men were saved by his grace, and not by
righteous works. For righteous actions are not according to nature, but
from accident, in the manner that the Angels who made the world have
laid it down, by such precepts enslaving men. Wherefore also he gave
new promises that the world should be dissolved and that they who
were his should be freed from the rule of those who made the world.
4. Wherefore their initiated priests live immorally. And everyone of
them practises magic arts to the best of his ability. They use exorcisms
and incantations. Love philtres also and spells and what are called
"familiars" and "dream-senders," and the rest of the curious arts are
assiduously cultivated by them. They have also an image of Simon
made in the likeness of Jupiter, and of Helen in that of Minerva; and
they worship the (statues); and they have a designation from their most
impiously minded founder, being called Simonians, from whom the
Gnôsis, falsely so-called, derives its origins, as one can learn from their
own assertions.
iii. Clemens Alexandrinus (Stromateis, ii. 11; vii. 17). Text: Opera

(edidit G. Dindorfius); Oxoniae, 1869.
In the first passage the Simonian use of the term, "He who stood," is
confirmed, in the latter we are told that a branch of the Simonians was
called Entychitae.
iv. Tertullianus, or Pseudo-Tertullianus (De Praescriptionibus, 46).
Text: Liber de Praes., etc. (edidit H. Hurter, S.J.); Oeniponti, 1870.
Tertullianus (De Anima, 34, 36). Text: _Bibliothec. Patr. Eccles.
Select._ (curavit Dr. Guil. Bruno Linder), Fasc. iv; Lipsiae, 1859.
In the Praescriptions the passage is very short, the briefest notice
possible, under the heading, "Anonymi Catalogus Heresum." The
notice in the De Anima runs as follows:
For Simon the Samaritan also, the purveyor of the Holy Spirit, in the
Acts of the Apostles, after he had been condemned by himself, together
with his money, to perdition, shed vain tears and betook himself to
assaulting the truth, as though for the gratification of vengeance.
Supported by the powers of his art, for the purpose of his illusions
through some power or other, he purchased with the same money a
Tyrian woman Helen from a place of public pleasure, a fit commodity
instead of the Holy Spirit. And he pretended that he was the highest
Father, and that she was his first suggestion whereby he had suggested
the making of the Angels and Archangels; that she sharing in this
design had sprung forth from the Father, and leaped down into the
lower regions; and that there, the design of the Father being prevented,
she had brought forth Angelic Powers ignorant of the Father, the
artificer of this world; by these she was detained, not according to his
intention, lest when she had gone they should be thought to be the
progeny of another. And therefore being made subject to every kind of
contumely, so that by her depreciation she might not choose to depart,
she had sunk to as low as the human form, as though she had had to be
restrained by chains of flesh, and then for many ages being turned
about through a succession of female conditions, she became also that
Helen who proved so fatal to Priam, and after to the eyes of Stesichorus,
for she had caused his blindness on account of the insult of his poem,
and afterwards had removed it because of her pleasure at his praise.

And thus transmigrating from body to body, in the extreme of
dishonour she