(_De Haeresibus_, i). Text: _Patres Quarti Ecclesiae
Saeculi_ (edidit D.A.B. Caillau); Paris, 1842.

Now after the passion of Christ, our Lord, and his ascension into
heaven, there arose a certain Simon, the magician, a Samaritan by
birth, from a village called Gittha, who having the leisure
necessary for the arts of magic deceived many, saying that he was
some Power of God, above all powers. Whom the Samaritans worship as
the Father, and wickedly extol as the founder of their heresy, and
strive to exalt him with many praises. Who having been baptized by
the blessed apostles, went back from their faith, and disseminated
a wicked and pernicious heresy, saying that he was transformed
supposedly, that is to say like a shadow, and thus he had suffered,
although, he says, he did not suffer.

And he also dared to say that the world had been made by Angels,
and the Angels again had been made by certain endowed with
perception from heaven, and that they (the Angels) had deceived the
human race.

He asserted, moreover, that there was a certain other Thought, who
descended into the world for the salvation of men; he says she was
that Helen whose story is celebrated in the Trojan War by the
vain-glorious poets. And the Powers, he says, led on by desire of
this Helen, stirred up sedition. "For she," he says, "arousing
desire in those Powers, and appearing in the form of a woman, could
not reaescend into heaven, because the Powers which were in heaven
did not permit her to reascend." Moreover, she looked for another
Power, that is to say, the presence of Simon himself, which would
come and free her.

The wooden horse also, which the vain-glorious poets say was in the
Trojan War, he asserted was allegorical, namely, that that
mechanical invention typified the ignorance of all the impious
nations, although it is well known that that Helen, who was with
the magician, was a prostitute from Tyre, and that this same Simon,
the magician, had followed her, and together with her had practised
various magic arts and committed divers crimes.

But after he had fled from the blessed Peter from the city of
Jerusalem, and came to Rome, and contended there with the blessed
apostle before the Emperor Nero, he was routed on every point by
the speech of the blessed apos