Libyans hearing the parrots' recantation (and) all assembling with one mind burned Apsethus.[1]
9. This (sort of man) one must suppose Simon the magician (to be), so that we would far sooner liken him to the Libyan who was born a man than to (Him) who is really God.<ref> Cruice's emendation. Schneidewin, Miller, and jNIacmahon read {{polytonic|τάχιον ἀνθρώπῳ γενομένῳ, ὄντως θε " sooner than to Him who though made man, was really God ;" but there seems no question here of the Second Person of the Trinity. But if the details of the likeness be held accurate and the magician had some such passion as Apsethus, we will undertake to teach Simon's parrots that Simon who stood, stands and will stand was not Christ, but p. 246. a man (sprung) from seed, born of a woman ^ begotten from blood and fleshly desire like the rest, and that he knew this to be so, we shall easily show as the story goes on.'* But Simon, stupidly and clumsily garbling the Law of INIoses — for when Closes has said that God was " a burning and consuming fire," ^ — he, not having received Moses' saying rightly, says that fire is the principle of the universals, and not having comprehended the saying that God is not Fire, but a burning and consuming fire, (thereby) not only rends in twain the Law of Moses, but steals from Heraclitus the Obscure.^ But Simon proclaims that the principle of the universals is a boundless power, speaking thus: — "This is the writing of the Announcement " of Voice and Name from the Thought of the great power of the Boundless One. Wherefore it will be sealed up, hidden, concealed and will be in the dwelling-place where the root of the universals is founded."^ But he says that the dwelling-place is the same
- ' ■yevprifia yvvaiKos, " birth of a woman." "* This is the evident meaning of the sentence. Plippolytus ignores all rules as to the order of his words. Macmahon translates as if Christ were meant. ^ Deut. iv. 24, '"consuming" only in A.V. ^ Empedocles also. See Vol. I. pp. 40-41 supra. "' TO yplij.ij.a a-n-orpdffeuis, liber rcvclationis, Cr., "the treatise of a revelation," Macmahon ; ns if it were the title of a book. But the title of the book attributed to Simon is given later as 'H onrocpdaLS fxeydri, and there seems no reason why the second syzygy of the series should be singled out in it for special mention.
- A ])hrase singularly like this occurs in the " Naassene " author.
- ↑ This story in one form or another appears in Maximus Tyrius (Diss. xxxv), Elian (Hist., xiv. 30), Justin (xxi. 4), and Pliny (Nat. Hist., viii. 16). The name seems to be Psapho.
