ons, and he has deceived those who
have been led away by him.

ix. Hieronymus (In _Matthaeum_, IV. xxiv. 5). Text: _S. Eusebii
Hieronymi Comment._; Migne _Patrol. Grec._, VII. col. 176.

Of whom there is one Simon, a Samaritan, whom we read of in the
_Acts of the Apostles_, who said he was some Great Power. And among
the rest of the things written in his volumes, he proclaimed as
follows:

"I am the Word of God; I am the glorious one, I the Paraclete, the
Almighty, I the whole of God."

x. Theodoretus _(Haereticarum Fabularum Compendium_, I. i.). Text: _Opera
Omnia_ (ex recensione Jacobi Simondi, denuo edidit Joann. Ludov.
Schulze); Halae, 1769.

Now Simon, the Samaritan magician, was the first minister of his
(the Daemon's)[58] evil practices who arose. Who, making his base
of operations from Gittha, which is a village of Samaria, and
having rushed to the height of sorcery, at first persuaded many,
by the wonder-working he wrought, to attend his school, and call
him some divine Power. But afterwards seeing the apostles
accomplishing wonder-workings that were really true and divine, and
bestowing on those who came to them the grace of the Spirit,
thinking himself also worthy to receive equal power from them, when
great Peter detected his villainous intention, and bade him heal
the incurable wounds of his mind with the drugs of repentance, he
immediately returned to his former evil-doing, and leaving Samaria,
since it had received the seeds of salvation, ran off to those who
had not yet been tilled by the apostles, in order that, having
deceived with his magic arts those who were easy to capture, and
having enslaved them in the bonds of their own legendary lore,[59]
he might make the teachings of the apostles difficult to be
believed.

But the divine grace armed great Peter against the fellow's
madness. For following after him, he dispelled his abominable
teaching like mist and darkness, and showed forth the rays of the
light of truth. But for all that the thrice wretched fellow, in
spite of his public exposure, did not cease from his working
against the truth, until he came to Rome, in the reign of Claudius
Caesar. And he so astonished the Romans with his sorceries that he
was honoured with a brazen pillar. But on the arrival of the divine
Peter