pursued.[87]

All societies that have secret rites and a public position, as was the
case with all the early communities of Christians and Gnostics, have had
like accusations brought against them. The communities of the Simonians
and Christians may or may not have been impure, it is now impossible to
pronounce a positive opinion. The important point to notice is that the
accusations being identical and the evidence or want of evidence the
same, condemnation or acquittal must be meted out to both; and that if
one is condemned and the other acquitted, the judgment will stand
condemned as biassed, and therefore be set aside by those who prefer
truth to prejudice.

So eager were the fathers to discredit Simon that they contradict
themselves in the most flagrant fashion on many important points. On the
one hand we hear that Samaria received the seed of the Word from the
apostles and Simon in despair had to flee, on the other hand Justin, a
native of Samaria, tells us, a century after this supposed event, that
nearly all the Samaritans are Simonians. The accounts of Simon's death
again are contradictory; if Simon perished so miserably at Rome, it is
the reverse of probable that the Romans would have set up a statue in
his honour. But, indeed, it is a somewhat thankless task to criticize
such manifest inventions; we know the source of their inspiration, and
we know the fertility of the religious imagination, especially in
matters of controversy, and this is a sufficient sieve wherewith to sift
them out of our heap.

I must now say a few words on Simonian literature of which the only
geniune specimens we can in any way be certain are the quotations from
the _Apophasis_ of Simon in the text of the _Philosophumena_.