SIMON Magus, or the Sorcerer, was a native of Gittton, a village of Samaria. According to the usual practice of the Asiatics of that age, he visited Egypt, and there probably became acquainted with the sublime mysteries taught in the Alexandrian school, and learned those theurgic or magical operations, by means of which it was believed that men might be delivered from the power of evil demons. Upon his return into his own country, the author of the Clementine Recognitions relates, that he imposed upon his countrymen by high pretensions to supernatural powers. And St Luke attests, that this artful fanatic, using sorcery, had bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that he was some great one; and that he obtained such general attention and reverence in Samaria, that the people all gave heed to him from the least to the greatest, saying, "This man is the great power of God."

By the preaching of Philip the Deacon, he was with other Samaritans converted to the Christian faith, and admitted into the infant church by the ordinance of baptism. His conversion, however, seems not to have been real; for, upon seeing the miraculous effects of the laying on of the apostle's hands, he offered them money, saying, "Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands he may receive the Holy Ghost." He probably thought Peter and John magicians like Simon himself, but better skilled in the art of deceiving the multitude.

Being sharply reproved for this impiety, he seems by his answer to have been made sensible of his sin; but his repentance, if sincere, was of short duration. Returning to his former practices of imposture, he traveled through various provinces of the empire, opposing the progress of the gospel; and arriving at Rome, he led astray vast numbers of people by his pretended miracles. How long he lived in that metropolis of the world, or in what manner he died, we have no accounts 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 aeons, 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 fugitive 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 aeons among men. To his wife Helena he also ascribed a similar kind of divine nature, pretending that a female aeon inhabited the body of this woman, to whom he gave the name of Ennoea, 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.