Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| These Vagaries Stimulated Some Profane Corruptions of Christianity. The Profanity of Simon Magus Condemned.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XXXIV.—These Vagaries Stimulated Some Profane
Corruptions of Christianity. The Profanity of Simon Magus
Condemned.
No tenet, indeed, under cover of any heresy has as yet
burst upon us, embodying any such extravagant fiction as that the souls
of human beings pass into the bodies of wild beasts; but yet we have
deemed it necessary to attack and refute this conceit, as a consistent
sequel to the preceding opinions, in order that Homer in the peacock
might be got rid of as effectually as Pythagoras in Euphorbus; and in
order that, by the demolition of the metempsychosis and
metensomatosis by the same blow, the ground might be cut
away which has furnished no inconsiderable support to our heretics.
There is the (infamous) Simon of Samaria in the Acts of the Apostles,
who chaffered for the Holy Ghost: after his condemnation by Him,
and a vain remorse that he and his money must perish together,1726
he applied his energies to the destruction
of the truth, as if to console himself with revenge. Besides the
support with which his own magic arts furnished him, he had recourse to
imposture, and purchased a Tyrian woman of the name of Helen out of a
brothel, with the same money which he had offered for the Holy
Spirit,—a traffic worthy of the wretched man. He actually feigned
himself to be the Supreme Father, and further pretended that the woman
was his own primary conception, wherewith he had purposed the creation
of the angels and the archangels; that after she was possessed of this
purpose she sprang forth from the Father and descended to the lower
spaces, and there anticipating the Father’s design had produced
the angelic powers, which knew nothing of the Father, the Creator of
this world; that she was detained a prisoner by these from a
(rebellious) motive very like her own, lest after her departure from
them they should appear to be the offspring of another being; and that,
after being on this account exposed to every insult, to prevent her
leaving them anywhere after her dishonour, she was degraded even to the
form of man, to be confined, as it were, in the bonds of the flesh.
Having during many ages wallowed about in one female shape and another,
she became the notorious Helen who was so ruinous to Priam, and
afterwards to the eyes of Stesichorus, whom, she blinded in revenge for
his lampoons, and then restored to sight to reward him for his
eulogies. After wandering about in this way from body to body, she, in
her final disgrace, turned out a viler Helen still as a professional
prostitute. This wench, therefore, was the lost sheep, upon whom the
Supreme Father, even Simon, descended, who, after he had recovered her
and brought her back—whether on his shoulders or loins I cannot
tell—cast an eye on the salvation of man, in order to gratify his
spleen by liberating them from the angelic powers. Moreover, to deceive
these he also himself assumed a visible shape; and feigning the
appearance of a man amongst men, he acted the part of the Son in Judea,
and of the Father in Samaria. O hapless Helen, what a hard fate is
yours between the poets and the heretics, who have blackened your fame
sometimes with adultery, sometimes with prostitution! Only her
rescue from Troy is a more glorious affair than her extrication from
the brothel. There were a thousand ships to remove her from Troy; a
thousand pence were probably more than enough to withdraw her from the
stews. Fie on you, Simon, to be so tardy in seeking her out, and so
inconstant in ransoming her! How different from Menelaus! As soon as he
has lost her, he goes in pursuit of her; she is no sooner ravished than
he begins his search; after a ten years’ conflict he
boldly rescues her:
there is no lurking, no deceiving, no cavilling. I am really afraid
that he was a much better “Father,” who laboured so much
more vigilantly, bravely, and perseveringly, about the recovery of his
Helen.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
