this Part in order that my readers may constantly keep it in mind during
the perusal of the Part which follows.

We must always remember that every single syllable we possess about
Simon comes from the hands of bitter opponents, from men who had no
mercy or toleration for the heretic. The heretic was accursed, condemned
eternally by the very fact of his heresy; an emissary of Satan and the
natural enemy of God. There was no hope for him, no mercy for him; he
was irretrievably damned.[95] The Simon of our authorities has no
friend; no one to say a word in his favour; he is hounded down the
byways of "history" and the highways of tradition, and to crush him is
to do God service. One solitary ray of light beams forth in the fragment
of his work called _The Great Revelation_, one solitary ray, that will
illumine the garbled accounts of his doctrine, and speak to the
Theosophists of to-day in no uncertain tones that each may say:

Methinks there is much reason in his sayings. If thou consider
rightly of the matter, [Simon] has had great wrong.[96]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 78: M.E. Amélineau, "Essai sur le Gnosticisme Égyptien,"
_Annales du Musée Guimet_, Tom. xvi. p. 28.]

[Footnote 79: Mosheim's _Institutes of Ecclesiastical History_ (Trans.
etc., Murdock and Soames; ed. Stubbs 1863), Vol. I., p. 87, note, gives
the following list of those who have maintained the theory of two
Simons: Vitringa, _Observ. Sacrar._, v. 12, § 9, p. 159, C.A. Heumann,
_Acta Erudit. Lips._ for April, A.D. 1727, p. 179, and Is. de Beausobre,
_Diss. sur l'Adamites_, pt. ii. subjoined to L'Enfants' _Histoire de la