INTRODUCTION.
PART I.
SOURCES OF INFORMATION.
PART II.
A REVIEW OF AUTHORITIES.
PART III.
THE THEOSOPHY OF SIMON.
INTRODUCTION.
Everybody
in Christendom has heard of Simon, the magician, and how Peter, the
apostle, rebuked him, as told in the narrative of the
Acts of the Apostles.
Many also have heard the legend of how at Rome this wicked sorcerer
endeavoured to fly by aid of the demons, and how Peter caused him to
fall headlong and thus miserably perish. And so most think that there
is an end of the matter, and either cast their mite of pity or
contempt at the memory of Simon, or laugh at the whole matter as the
invention of superstition or the imagination of religious fanaticism,
according as their respective beliefs may be in orthodoxy or
materialism. This for the general. Students of theology and church
history, on the other hand, have had a more difficult task set them
in comparing and arranging the materials they have at their disposal,
as found in the patristic writings and legendary records; and various
theories have been put forward, not the least astonishing being the
supposition that Simon was an alias for Paul, and that the Simon and
Peter in the accounts of the fathers and in the narrative of the
legends were simply concrete symbols to represent the two sides of
the Pauline and Petrine controversies.The
first reason why I have ventured on this present enquiry is that
Simon Magus is invariably mentioned by the heresiologists as the
founder of the first heresy of the commonly-accepted Christian era,
and is believed by them to have been the originator of those systems
of religio-philosophy and theosophy which are now somewhat
inaccurately classed together under the heading of Gnosticism. And
though this assumption of the patristic heresiologists is entirely
incorrect, as may be proved from their own works, it is nevertheless
true that Simonianism is the first system that, as far as our present
records go, came into conflict with what has been regarded as the
orthodox stream of Christianity. A second reason is that I believe
that Simon has been grossly misrepresented, and entirely
misunderstood, by his orthodox opponents, whoever they were, in the
first place, and also, in the second place, by those who have
ignorantly and without enquiry copied from them. But my chief reason
is that the present revival of theosophical enquiry throws a flood of
light on Simon's teachings, whenever we can get anything approaching
a first-hand statement of them, and shows that it was identical in
its fundamentals with the Esoteric Philosophy of all the great
religions of the world.In
this enquiry, I shall have to be slightly wearisome to some of my
readers, for instead of giving a selection or even a paraphraze of
the notices on Simon which we have from authenticated patristic
sources, I shall furnish verbatim translations, and present a digest
only of the unauthenticated legends. The growth of the Simonian
legend must unfold itself before the reader in its native form as it
comes from the pens of those who have constructed it. Repetitions
will, therefore, be unavoidable in the marshalling of authorities,
but they will be shown to be not without interest in the subsequent
treatment of the subject, and at any rate we shall at least be on the
sure ground of having before us all that has been said on the matter
by the Church fathers. Having cited these authorities, I shall
attempt to submit them to a critical examination, and so eliminate
all accretions, hearsay and controversial opinions, and thus sift out
what reliable residue is possible. Finally, my task will be to show
that Simon taught a system of Theosophy, which instead of deserving
our condemnation should rather excite our admiration, and that,
instead of being a common impostor and impious perverter of public
morality, his method was in many respects of the same nature as the
methods of the theosophical movement of to-day, and deserves the
study and consideration of all students of Theosophy.This
essay will, therefore, be divided into the following parts:
—Sources
of Information.
—A
Review of Authorities.
—The
Theosophy of Simon.
