ognitionen_,
p. 224.]

[Footnote 86: _Hist. Eccles._, ii. 13.]

[Footnote 87: _Op. cit._, i. 213.]

[Footnote 88: _Op. cit._, ii. 217.]

[Footnote 89: _Op. cit._, 32.]

[Footnote 90: Tom. xxiii, "Dictionnaire des Apocryphes," Vol. II.,
Index, pp. lxviii, lxix.]

[Footnote 91: _Spicilegium SS. Patrum ut et Haereticorum Saeculorum post
Christum natum, I, II et III_; Johannes Ernestus Grabius; Oxoniae, 1714,
ed. alt., Vol. I., pp. 305-312.]

[Footnote 92: P. 306.]

[Footnote 93: _Comment. de Paradiso_, c. i., pp. 200, _et seqq._,
editionis Antverpiensis, anno 1567, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 94: Grabe is also interesting for a somewhat wild speculation
which he quotes from a British Divine (apud Usserium in _Antiquitatibus
Eccles. Britannicae_), that the tonsure of the monks was taken from the
Simonians. (Grabe, _op. cit._, p, 697.)]

[Footnote 95: In the epistle of St. Ignatius _Ad Trallianos_ (Sec. 11),
Simon is called "the first-born Son of the Devil" ([Greek: prototokon
Diabolou huion]); and St. Polycarp seems to refer to Simon in the
following passage in his Epistle _Ad Philipp._ (Sec. 7):

"Everyone who shall not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh,
is antichrist, and who shall not confess the martyrdom of the cross, is
of the Devil; and he who translates the words of the Lord according to
his own desires, and says there is neither resurrection nor judgment, he
is _the first-born of Satan_."]

PART III.

THE THEOSOPHY OF SIMON.

In treating of eschatology and the beginning of things the human mind is
ever beset with the same difficulties, and no matter how grand may be
the effort of the intellect to transcend itself, the finite must ever
fail to comprehend the infinite. How much less then can words define
that which even the whole phenomenal universe fails to express! The
change from the One to the Many is not to be described. How the
All-Deity becomes the primal Trinity, is the eternal problem set for
man's solution. No system of religion or philosophy has ever explained
this inexplicable mystery, for it cannot be understood by the embodied
Soul, whose vision and comprehension are dulled by the grossness of its
physical envelope. Even the illuminated Soul that quits its prison
house, to bathe in the light of infinitude, can only recollect flashes
of the Vision Glorious once it returns again to earth.

And this is also the teaching of Simon when he says:

I say there are many