Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily II/Chapter 22

Chapter XXII.&#8212;Doctrines of Simon.

First Aquila began to speak in this wise:&#160; &#8220;Listen, O dearest brother, that you may know accurately everything about this man, whose he is, and what, and whence; and what the things are which he does, and how and why he does them. &#160; This Simon is the son of Antonius and Rachel, a Samaritan by race, of the village of Gitth&#230;, which is six schoeni distant from the city.&#160; He having disciplined himself greatly in Alexandria, and being very powerful in magic, and being ambitious, wishes to be accounted a certain supreme power, greater even than the God who created the world.&#160; And sometimes intimating that he is Christ, he styles himself the Standing One. &#160; And this epithet he employs, as intimating that he shall always stand, and as not having any cause of corruption so that his body should fall.&#160; And he neither says that the God who created the world is the Supreme, nor does he believe that the dead will be raised.&#160; He rejects Jerusalem, and substitutes Mount Gerizzim for it.&#160; Instead of our Christ, he proclaims himself.&#160; The things of the law he explains by his own presumption; and he says, indeed, that there is to be a judgment, but he does not expect it.&#160; For if he were persuaded that he shall be judged by God, he would not dare be impious towards God Himself.&#160; Whence some not knowing that, using religion as a cloak, he spoils the things of the truth, and faithfully believing the hope and the judgment which in some way he says are to be, are ruined.