he coming of
the Christ, the Good God, and forbids mean things? And how could
there not be one divine nature and the same spirit of the _New_ and
_Old Testament_, when the Lord said: "I am not come to destroy the
Law, but to fulfil it"?[51] And that He might show that the Law was
declared through Him and was given through Moses, and that the
grace of the Gospel has been preached through himself and his
carnal presence, He said to the Jews: "If ye believe Moses, ye
should also believe me; for he wrote about me."[52] There are many
other arguments also to oppose to the contention of the sorcerer.
For how will obscene things give life, if it were not a conception
of daemons? When the Lord himself answers in the Gospel to those
who say unto him: "If such is the case of the man and the woman, it
is not good to marry." But He said unto them: "All do not hold
this; for there are eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the
sake of the kingdom of the heavens."[53] And He showed that
natural abstinence from union is the gift of the kingdom of the
heavens; and again in another place He says with respect to
righteous marriage--which Simon of his own accord basely corrupting
treats according to his own desires--"Whom God has joined together
let no man put asunder."[54]

6. And how unaware is again the vagabond that he confutes himself
by his own babbling, not knowing what he gives out? For after
saying that the Angels were produced by him through his Thought, he
goes on to say that he changed his form in every heaven, to escape
their notice in his descent. Consequently he avoided them through
fear. And how did the babbler fear the Angels whom he had himself
made? And how will not the dissemination of his error be found by
the intelligent to be instantly refuted by everyone, when the
scripture says: "In the beginning[55] God made the heaven and the
earth"?[56] And in unison with this word, the Lord in the Gospel
says, as though to his own Father: "O Father, Lord of heaven and
earth."[57] If, therefore, the maker of heaven and earth is
naturally God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, all that the
slanderer Simon says is vain; to wit, the defective production of
the world by the Angels, and all the rest he has babbled about in
addition to his world of Daem