that can be fully depended on. The Christian writers tell us, that being raised in the air by two demons, he was deprived of their support by the prayers of St Peter and St Paul, and falling, broke his legs. By some he is thought to have been the person mentioned by Suetonius, who, undertaking to fly in the presence of Nero, fell to the ground with such violence, that his blood spurted up to the gallery where the emperor was sitting.

The sum of this impostor's doctrine, divested of allegory, was, that from the Divine Being, as a fountain of light, flow various orders of zones, or eternal natures, subsisting within the plenitude of the divine essence; that beyond these, in the order of emanation, are different classes of intelligences, among the lowest of which are human souls; that matter is the most remote production of the emanative power, which, on account of its infinite distance from the Fountain of Light, possesses sluggish and malignant qualities, which oppose the divine operations, and are the cause of evil; that it is the great design of philosophy to deliver the soul from its imprisonment in matter, and restore it to that divine light from which it was derived; and that for this purpose God had sent him one of the first zones among men. To his wife Helena he also ascribed a similar kind of divine nature, pretending that a female zone inhabited the body of this woman, to whom he gave the name of Enna, Wisdom; whence some Christian fathers have said, that he called her the Holy Spirit. He also taught the transmigration of souls, and denied the resurrection of the body.

(Richard), was born at Dieppe the 15th May 1628. He began his studies among the priests of the Oratory in that city, but quitted their society in a short time. From Dieppe he went to Paris, where he made great progress in the study of the oriental languages. Some time afterwards he joined the society of the Oratory again, and became a priest of it in 1660. In 1670 he published some pieces of a smaller kind. In 1678 his Critical History of the Old Testament appeared, but was immediately suppressed by the intrigues of Messieurs du Port Royal. It was reprinted the year after, and its excellence soon drew the attention of foreigners; an edition of it was accordingly published at Amsterdam in Latin, and at London in English.

He died at Dieppe in 1712, at the age of 74.

He certainly possessed a vast deal of learning; his criticism is exact, but not always moderate; and there reigns in his writings a spirit of novelty and fingularity which raised him a great many adversaries. The most celebrated of these were Le Clerc, Vossius, Jurieu, Du Pin, and Boffuet. Simon wrote an answer to most of the books that were published against him, and displays a pride and obstinacy in his controversial writings which do him little honour.

He was the author of a great many books. The following are the principal: 1. The Ceremonies of the Jews, translated from the Italian of Leo of Modena, with a supplement concerning the sects of the Baraites and Samaritans. 2. L'Histoire Critique du Vieux Testament, "The Critical History of the Old Testament." This is a very important work, and deserves the attention of every clergyman. He sometimes, however, deviates from the road of integrity, to serve the cause of the church of Rome, particularly in his endeavours to Simonides, prove the uncertainty of the Hebrew language. These passages have been very justly exposed and confuted by Dr Campbell, in his ingenious Preliminary Dissertations to his new Translation of the Gospels. 3. Critical History of the Text of the New Testament. 4. Critical History of the Versions of the New Testament. 5. Critical History of the principal Commentators on the New Testament. 6. Inspiration of the Sacred Books. 7. A translation of the New Testament. This book was censured by Cardinal Noailles and Bossuet. 8. The History of the rise and progress of Ecclesiastical Revenues, which is commended by Voltaire, as is his Critical History of the Old Testament. It resulted from a quarrel with a community of Benedictines. 9. A new celestial Library, which points out the good books in various kinds of literature, and the use to be made of them. 10. Critical History of the Belief and Customs of the Nations on the Levant. 11. Critical Letters, &c.