whole body of the world. For, what country had not some citizens in this city? Or what nation anywhere, could be ignorant of anything which Rome had been taught? Here were philosophical dogmas to be put down—vanities of worldly wisdom to be weakened—idol-worship to be overthrown,"—&c. "To this city therefore, thou, most blessed apostle Peter! didst not fear to come, and (sharing thy glory with the apostle Paul, there occupied with the arrangement of other churches,) didst enter that forest of raging beasts, and didst pass upon that ocean of boisterous depths, with more firmness than when thou walkedst on the sea. Nor didst thou fear Rome, the mistress of the world, though thou didst once, in the house of Caiaphas, dread the servant maid of the priest. Not because the power of Claudius, or the cruelty of Nero, were less dreadful than the judgment of Pilate, or the rage of the Jews; but because the power of love now overcame the occasion of fear, since thy regard for the salvation of souls would not suffer thee to yield to terror. * * * The miraculous signs, gifts of grace, and trials of virtue, which had already been so multiplied to thee, now increased thy boldness. Already hadst thou taught those nations of the circumcision who believed. Already hadst thou filled Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia with the gospel; and now, without a doubt of the advance of the work, or of the certainty of thy own fate, thou didst plant the trophy of the cross of Christ upon the towers of Rome." Arnobius is also quoted by Baronius to similar effect.
Simon Magus.—This fable has received a wonderfully wide circulation, and long maintained a place among the credible accounts of early Christian history, probably from the circumstance of its taking its origin from so early a source. Justin Martyr, who flourished from the year 140 and afterwards, in his apology for the Christian religion, addressed to the emperor Antoninus Pius, says, "Simon, a Samaritan, born in a village named Gitthon, in the time of Claudius Caesar, was received as a god in your imperial city of Rome, and honored with a statue, like other gods, on account of his magical powers there exhibited by the aid of demons; and this statue was set up in the river Tiber, between two bridges, and had this Latin inscription, Simoni deo sancto. Him too, all the Samaritans worship, and a few of other nations, acknowledging him as the highest god, ([Greek: prôton theon].) They also worship a certain Helena, who at that time followed him about," &c. &c. &c. with more dirty trash besides, than I can find room for. And in another passage of the same work, he alludes to the same circumstances. "In your city, the mistress of the world, in the time of Claudius Caesar, Simon Magus struck the Roman senate and people with such admiration of himself, that he was ranked among the gods, and was honored with a statue." Irenaeus, who flourished about the year 180, also gives this story with hardly any variation from Justin. Tertullian, about A. D. 200, repeats the same, with the addition of the circumstance, that not satisfied with the honors paid to himself, he caused the people to debase themselves still further, by paying divine honors to a woman called (by Tertullian) Larentina, who was exalted by them to a rank with the goddesses of the ancient mythology, though the good father gives her but a bad name. Eusebius, also, about A. D. 320, refers to the testimonies of Justin and Irenaeus, and adds some strange particulars about a sect, existing in his time, the members of which were said to acknowledge this Simon as the author of their faith, whom they worshiped along with this woman Helena, falling prostrate before the pictures of both of them, with incense and sacrifices and libations to them, with other rites, unutterably and unwritably bad. (See Euseb. Ecc. Hist. II. 13.)
In the three former writers, Justin, Irenaeus and Tertullian, this absurd story stands by itself, and has no connection with the life of Peter; but Eusebius goes on to commemorate the circumstance, previously unrecorded, that Peter went to Rome for the express purpose of putting down this blasphemous wretch, as specified above, in the text of my narrative, from this author. (Euseb. Hist. II. 14.)
Now all this fine series of accounts, though seeming to bear such an overwhelming weight of testimony in favor of the truth and reality of Simon Magus's visit to Rome, is proved to be originally based on an absolute falsehood; and the nature of this falsehood is thus exposed. In the year 1574, during the pontificate of Pope Gregory XIII., there was an excavation made for some indifferent purpose in Rome, on the very island in the Tiber, so particularly described by Justin, as lying in the center of the river between two bridges, each of which rested an abutment on it, and ran from it to the opposite shores. In the progress of this excavation, the workmen, as is very common in that vast city of buried ruins, turned up, among other remains of antiquity, the remnant of a statue with its pedestal, which had evidently once
