Simon Magus by George Robert Stow Mead
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page 12 of 127 (09%)
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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 |
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