The Pseudo-Clementines—Was Rufinus the sole medieval version?—Previous Greek versions—Date of the original version—Internal evidence—Resemblances to Apuleius and Philostratus—Science and religion—Interest in natural science—God and nature—Sin and nature—Attitude to astrology—Arguments against genethlialogy—The virtuous Seres—Theory of demons—Origin of magic—Frequent accusations of magic—Marvels of magic—How distinguish miracle from magic?—Deceit in magic—Murder of a boy—Magic is evil—Magic is an art—Other accounts of Simon Magus: Justin Martyr to Hippolytus—Peter’s account in the Didascalia et Constitutiones Apostolorum—Arnobius, Cyril, and Philastrius—Apocryphal Acts of Peter and Paul—An account ascribed to Marcellus—Hegesippus—A sermon on Simon’s fall—Simon Magus in medieval art.

“The Truth herself shall receive thee a wanderer and a stranger, and enroll thee a citizen of her own city.”

—Recognitions I, 13.

The starting-point and chief source for this chapter will be the writings known as the Pseudo-Clementines and more particularly the Latin version commonly called The Recognitions. We shall then note other accounts of its villain-hero, Simon Magus, in patristic literature.[1725] The Pseudo-Clementines, as the name implies, are works or different versions of one work ascribed to Clement of Rome, who is represented as writing to James, the brother of the Lord, an account of events and discussions in which he and the apostle Peter had participated not long after the crucifixion. This Pseudo-Clementine literature has a double character, combining romantic narrative concerning Peter, Simon Magus, and the family of Clement with long, argumentative, didactic, and doctrinal discussions and dialogues in which the same persons participate but Peter takes the leading and most authoritative part. Not only the authorship, origin, and date, but even the title or titles and the make-up and arrangement of the various versions and their original are doubtful or disputed matters. The versions now extant and published seem by no means to have been the only ones, but we will describe them first. In Greek we have the version known as The Homilies in twenty books, in which the didactic element preponderates. It is extant in only two manuscripts of the twelfth and fourteenth centuries at Paris and Rome,[1726] but is also preserved in part in epitomes. Different from it is the Latin version in which the narrative element plays a greater part.

This Latin version, now usually referred to as The Recognitions, because the main point in its plot is the successive bringing together again of, and recognition of one another by, the members of a family long separated, is the translation made by Rufinus, who is last heard from in 410. It is usually divided into ten books. Numerous manuscripts of this version attest its popularity and influence in the middle ages, when we early find Isidore of Seville quoting Clement several times as an authority on natural science.[1727] Arevalus, however, thought that Isidore used some other version of the Pseudo-Clementines than that of Rufinus,[1728] and in the medieval period another title was common, namely, The Itinerary of Clement, or The Itinerary of Peter.[1729] William of Auvergne, for instance, in the first half of the thirteenth century cites the Itinerarium Clementis or “Book of the disputations of Peter against Simon Magus.”[1730] This Itinerary of Clement also heads the list of works condemned as apocryphal by Pope Gelasius at a synod at Rome in 494,[1731] a list reproduced by Vincent of Beauvais in his Speculum naturale in the thirteenth century[1732] and in the previous century rather more accurately by Hugh of St. Victor in his Didascalicon.[1733] In all three cases the full title is given in practically the same words, “The Itinerary by the name of the Apostle Peter which is called Saint Clement’s, an apocryphal work in eight books.”[1734] Here we encounter a difficulty, since as we have said The Recognitions are in ten books. We find, however, that in another passage[1735] Vincent correctly cites the ninth book of The Recognitions as Clement’s ninth book, and that the number of books into which The Recognitions is divided varies in the manuscripts, and that they, too, more often call it The Itinerary of Clement or even apply other designations. Rabanus Maurus in the ninth century quotes an utterance of the apostle Peter from The History of Saint Clement, but the passage is found in The Recognitions.[1736] Vincent of Beauvais also quotes “the blessed apostle Peter in a certain letter attached to The Itinerary of Clement.” No letter by Peter is prefaced to the printed text of The Recognitions, nor does Rufinus mention such a letter, although he does speak in his preface of a letter by Clement which he has already translated elsewhere. Prefixed to the printed Homilies, however, and in the manuscripts found also with The Recognitions, are letters of Peter and Clement respectively to James. But the passage quoted by Vincent does not occur in either, but comes from the tenth book of The Recognitions.[1737] It would seem, therefore, despite variations in the number of books and in the arrangement of material, that the Latin version by Rufinus was the only one current in the middle ages, but we cannot be sure of this until all the extant manuscripts have been more carefully examined.[1738]

The version by Rufinus differed from previous ones not only in being in Latin but also in various omissions which he admits he made and perhaps other changes to suit it to his Latin audience. That there was already more than one version in Greek he shows in his preface by describing another text than that upon which his translation or adaptation was based. Neither of these two Greek texts appears to have been the same as the present Homilies.[1739] Yet The Homilies were apparently in existence at that time, since a Syriac manuscript of 411 A. D. contains four books of The Homilies and three of The Recognitions,[1740] thus in itself furnishing an illustration of the ease with which new versions might be compounded from old. Both The Homilies and The Recognitions as they have reached us would seem to be confusions and perversions of this sort, as their incidents are obviously not arranged in correct order. For instance, when the story of The Recognitions begins Christ is still alive and reports of His miracles are reaching Rome; the same year Barnabas pays a visit to Rome and Clement almost immediately follows him back to Syria, making the passage from Rome to Caesarea in fifteen days;[1741] but on his arrival there he meets Peter who tells him that “a week of years” have elapsed since the crucifixion and of other intervening events involving a considerable lapse of time. Or again, in the third book of The Recognitions Simon is said to have sunk his magical paraphernalia in the sea and gone to Rome, but as late as the tenth and last book we find him still in Antioch and with enough paraphernalia left to transform the countenance of Faustus.

Yet this late and misarranged version on which Rufinus bases his text must have been already in existence for some time, since he confesses that he has been a long while about his translation. The virgin Sylvia who “once enjoined it upon” him to “render Clement into our language” is now spoken of as “of venerable memory,” and it is to Bishop Gaudentius that Rufinus “after many delays” in his old age “at length” presents the work. We might thus infer that the original and presumably more self-consistent Pseudo-Clementine narrative, which Rufinus evidently does not use, must date back to a much earlier period. We hear from other sources of The Circuits or Periodoi of Peter by Clement, but this may have been the version translated by Rufinus.[1742] Conservative Christian scholars regard as the oldest unmistakable allusion to the Pseudo-Clementines that by Eusebius early in the fourth century, who, without giving any specific titles, speaks of certain “verbose and lengthy writings, containing dialogues of Peter forsooth and Apion,” which are ascribed to Clement but are really of recent origin. As for the date of the original work from which Homilies and Recognitions are derived,[1743] from 200 to 280 A. D. is suggested by Harnack and his school, who take middle ground between the extreme contentions of Hilgenfeld and Chapman. But the original Pseudo-Clement is supposed to have utilized The Teachings of Peter and The Acts of Peter, which Waitz would date between 135 and 210 A. D.[1744]

The work itself, even in the perverted form preserved by Rufinus, makes pretensions to the highest Christian antiquity. Not only is it addressed to James and put into the mouth of Clement, but Paul is never mentioned, and no book of the New Testament is cited by name, while sayings of Jesus are cited which are not found in the Bible. Christ is often alluded to in a veiled and mystic fashion as “the true prophet,” who had appeared aforetime to Abraham and Moses, and interesting and vivid incidental glimpses are given of what purports to be the life of an early Christian community and perhaps is that of the Ebionites, Essenes, or some Gnostic sect. Emphasis is laid upon the purifying power of baptism, upon Peter’s practice of bathing early every morning, preferably in the sea or running water, upon secret prayers and meetings, a separate table for the initiated, esoteric discussions of religion at cock-crow and in the night, and upon power over demons. All this may be mere clever invention, but there certainly is an atmosphere of verisimilitude about it; and it is rather odd that a later writer should be “very careful to avoid anachronisms,” in whose account as it now stands are such glaring chronological confusions as those already noted concerning Clement’s voyage to Caesarea and Simon’s departure for Rome. But, as in the case of the New Testament Apocrypha, the exact date of composition makes little difference for our purpose, for which it is enough that the Pseudo-Clementines played an important part in the first thirteen centuries of Christian thought viewed as a whole. Eusebius and Epiphanius may find them unpalatable in certain respects and reject them as heretical, but Basil and Gregory utilize their arguments against astrology. Gelasius may classify them as apocryphal, but Vincent of Beauvais justifies a discriminating use of the apocryphal books in general and cites this one in particular more than once as an authority, and the incidents of its story were embodied, as we shall see, in medieval art.

The same resemblance to the works of Apuleius and Philostratus that we noted in the case of an apocryphal gospel is observable in the Pseudo-Clementines. We see in The Recognitions the same mixed interest in natural science and in magic combined with religion and romantic incident that characterized the variegated and motley page of the author of the Metamorphoses and the biographer of Apollonius of Tyana. It is probably only a coincidence that two of the works of Apuleius are dedicated to a Faustinus whom he calls “my son,” while Clement’s father is named Faustus or Faustinianus, and the legend of Faust is believed to originate with him and the episodes in which he is concerned.[1745] Less accidental may be the connection between Peter’s religious sea-bathing and that purification in the sea by which the hero of the Metamorphoses began the process by which he succeeded in regaining his lost human form. More considerable are the detailed parallels to the work of Philostratus.[1746] Peter corresponds roughly to Apollonius and Clement to Damis, while the wizards and magi are ably personified by the famous Simon Magus. If Apollonius abstained from all meat and wine and wore linen garments, Peter lives upon “bread alone, with olives, and seldom even with pot-herbs; and my dress,” he says, “is what you see, a tunic with a pallium: and having these, I require nothing more.”[1747] Like Philostratus the Pseudo-Clement speaks of bones of enormous size which are still to be seen as proof of the existence of giants in former ages;[1748] and the accounts of the Brahmans and allusions to the Scythians in the Life of Apollonius of Tyana are paralleled in The Recognitions by a series of brief chapters on these and other strange races.[1749] Peter is, of course, a Jew, not a Hellene like Apollonius, but in his train are men who are thoroughly trained in Greek philosophy and capable of discussing its problems at length. They also are not without appreciation of pagan art and turn aside, with Peter’s consent, to visit a temple upon an island and “to gaze earnestly” upon “the wonderful columns” and “very magnificent works of Phidias.”[1750] Just as Apollonius knew all languages without having ever studied them, so Peter is so filled with the Spirit of God that he is “full of all knowledge” and “not ignorant even of Greek learning”; but to descend from his usual divine themes to discuss it is considered to be rather beneath him. Clement, however, felt the need of coaching Peter up a little in Greek mythology.[1751] This mingled attitude of contempt for “the babblings of the Greeks” when compared to divine revelation, and of respect for Greek philosophy when compared with anything else is, it is hardly necessary to say, a very common one with Christian writers throughout the Roman Empire.

The same attitude prevails toward natural science. At the very beginning of the Clementines the curiosity of the ancient world in regard to things of nature is shown by the question which someone propounded to Barnabas when he began to preach, at Rome according to The Recognitions, at Alexandria according to The Homilies, of the Son of God. The heckler wanted to know why so small a creature as a fly has not only six feet but wings in addition, while the elephant, despite its enormous bulk, has only four feet and no wings at all. Barnabas did not answer the question, although he asserted that he could if he wished to, making the excuse that it was not fitting to speak of mere creatures to those who were still ignorant of their Creator.[1752]

This unwillingness to discuss natural questions by no means continues characteristic of the Clementines, however. Not only does Peter explain to Clement the creation of the world and propound the extraordinary[1753] doctrine that after completing the process of creation God “set an angel as chief over the angels, a spirit over the spirits, a star over the stars, a demon over the demons, a bird over the birds, a beast over the beasts, a serpent over the serpents, a fish over the fishes,” and “over men a man who is Christ Jesus.”[1754] Not only does he later in public defend baptism with water on the ground that “all things are produced from waters” and that waters were first created.[1755] We also find Niceta accepting the Greek hypothesis of four elements, of the sphericity of the universe, and of the motions of the heavenly bodies “assigned to them by fixed laws and periods,” citing Plato’s Timaeus, mentioning Aristotle’s introduction of a fifth element,[1756] disputing the atomic theory of Epicurus,[1757] and alluding to “mechanical science.”[1758] He further discusses the generation of plants, animals, and human beings as evidences of divine design and providence,[1759] in which connection he collects a number of examples of marvelous gen eration of animals such as moles from earth and vipers from ashes, and affirms that “the crow conceives through the mouth and the weasel generates through the ear.”[1760] Simon Magus declared himself immortal on the theory, which we shall find cropping out again in the thirteenth century in Roger Bacon and Peter of Abano, that his flesh was “so compacted by the power of his divinity that it can endure to eternity.”[1761] On the other hand, Niceta describes the action of the intestines in a fairly intelligent manner,[1762] and tells how the blood flows like water from a fountain, “and first borne along in one channel, and then spreading through innumerable veins as through canals, irrigates the entire territory of the human body with vital streams.”[1763] A little later on Aquila gives a natural explanation of rainbows.[1764]

There is noticeable, it is true, a tendency, common in patristic literature and found even among those fathers who hold the dualism of the Manichees in the deepest detestation, to make a distinction between God and nature and to attribute any flaws in the universe to the latter.[1765] Niceta cannot agree with “those who speak of nature instead of God and declare that all things were made by nature”; he holds that God created the universe. But Aquila, who supports his brother in the discussion, seems to think that God’s responsibility for the universe ceased, at least in part, after it was once created. At any rate he admits that “in this world some things are done in an orderly and some in a disorderly fashion. Those things therefore,” he continues, “that are done rationally, believe that they are done by Providence; but those that are done irrationally and inordinately, believe that they befall naturally and happen accidentally.”[1766]

But even nature sometimes rises up against the sins of mankind according to Peter and his associates. Aquila believes that the sins of men are the cause of pestilences;[1767] that “when chastisement is inflicted upon men according to the will of God, he” (i. e. the Sun, already called “that good servant” and whom the early Christians found it difficult to cease to personify) “glows more fiercely and burns up the world with more vehement fires”;[1768] and that “those who have become acquainted with prophetic discourse know when and for what reason blight, hail, pestilence, and such like have occurred in every generation, and for what sins these have been sent as a punishment.”[1769] Peter gives the impression that nature sometimes acts rather independently of God in thus punishing the wicked. He says: “But this also I would have you know, that upon such souls God does not take vengeance directly, but His whole creation rises up and inflicts punishments upon the impious. And although in the present world the goodness of God bestows the light of the world and the services of the earth alike upon the pious and the impious, yet not without grief does the Sun afford his light and the other elements perform their services to the impious. And, in short, sometimes even in opposition to the goodness of the Creator, the elements are worn out by the crimes of the wicked; and hence it is that either the fruit of the earth is blighted, or the composition of the air is vitiated, or the heat of the sun is increased beyond measure, or there is an excess of rain or cold.”[1770] This is a close approach to the notion of The Book of Enoch that human sin upsets the world of nature, and an even closer approach to the theory of the Brahmans in The Life of Apollonius of Tyana that prolonged drought is a punishment visited by the world-soul upon human sinfulness.

Such vestiges of the world-soul doctrine, such a tendency to ascribe emotion and will to the elements and planets, to personify them, and to think of God as ruling the world indirectly through them, prepare us to find an attitude rather favorable to astrological theory. Indeed, in the first book of The Recognitions[1771] we are told in so many words that the Creator adorned the visible heaven with stars, sun, and moon in order that “they might be for an indication of things past, present, and future,” and that these celestial signs, while seen by all, are “understood only by the learned and intelligent.” Astrology is respectfully described as “the science of mathesis,”[1772] and, as was common in the Roman Empire, astrologers are called mathematici.[1773] A defender even of the most extreme pretensions of the art is not abused as a charlatan but is courteously greeted as “so learned a man,”[1774] and all admire his eloquence, grave manners, and calm speech, and accord him a respectful hearing.[1775] Astrology, far from being regarded as necessarily contrary to religion, is thought to furnish arguments for the existence of God, and it is said that Abraham, “being an astrologer, was able from the rational system of the stars to recognize the Creator, while all other men were in error, and understood that all things are regulated by His Providence.”[1776] The number seven is somewhat emphasized[1777] and the twelve apostles are called the twelve months of Christ who is the acceptable year of the Lord.[1778] Somewhat similarly the Gnostic followers of the heretic Valentinus made much of the Duodecad, a group of twelve aeons, and believed, according to Irenaeus, “that Christ suffered in the twelfth month. For their opinion is that He continued to preach for one year only after His baptism.”[1779] Peter, too, has a group of twelve disciples.[1780] Niceta speaks of “man who is a microcosm in the great world.”[1781] It is admitted that the stars exert evil as well as good influence,[1782] and that the astrologer “can indicate the evil desire which malign virtue produces.”[1783] But it is contended that, “possessing freedom of the will, we sometimes resist our desires and sometimes yield to them,” and that no astrologer can predict beforehand which course we will take.

In fine, astrology is criticized adversely only when it goes to the length of contending that “there is neither any God, nor any worship, neither is there any Providence in the world, but all things are done by fortuitous chance and genesis”; that “whatever your genesis contains, that shall befall you”;[1784] and that the constellations force men to commit murder, adultery, and other crimes.[1785] On this point Niceta and Aquila, and finally Clement himself, have long discussions with an aged adept in genethlialogy which fill a large portion of the last three books of The Recognitions, and include a dozen chapters which are little more than an extract from The Laws of Countries of Bardesanes. Divine Providence and human free will are defended, and genethlialogy is represented as an error which has received confirmation through the operations of demons.[1786] It is asserted that men can be kept from committing crimes by fear of punishment and by law, even if they are naturally so inclined, and races like the Seres (Chinese) and Brahmans are adduced as examples of entire races of men who never commit the crimes into which men are supposed to be forced by the constellations. The argument is also advanced, “Since God is righteous and since He Himself made human nature, how could it be that He should place genesis in opposition to us, which should compel us to sin, and then that He should punish us when we do sin?”[1787] It is further charged that the constellations are so complicated, that for any given moment one astrologer may infer a favorable and another a disastrous influence,[1788] and that most successful explanations of the effects of the stars are made after the event, like dreams of which men can make nothing at the time, but “when any event occurs, then they adapt what they saw in the dream to what has occurred.”[1789] Finally the aged defender of genesis, who believed that his own fate and that of his wife had been accurately prescribed by their horoscopes, turns out to be Faustinianus (called Faustus in The Homilies), the long-lost father of Clement, Niceta, and Aquila; is also restored to his wife; and learns that his previous interpretation of events from the stars was quite erroneous.[1790]

The ideal picture of the Seres or Chinese, “who dwell at the beginning of the world,” which The Recognitions apparently borrows from Bardesanes, is perhaps worth repeating here as an odd admission that a non-Christian people can attain a state of moral perfection and sinlessness, as well as an interesting bit of ancient ethnology. “In all that country which is very large there is neither temple nor image nor harlot nor adulteress, nor is any thief brought to trial. But neither is any man ever slain there.... For this reason they are not chastened with those plagues of which we have spoken; they live to extreme old age, and die without sickness.”[1791] Perhaps these virtuous Seres are the blameless Hyperboreans in another guise.

Demons and angels abound in The Recognitions. One may be rebuked and scourged at night by an angel of God.[1792] Peter says that every nation has an angel, since God has divided the earth into seventy-two sections and appointed an angel as governor and prince of each.[1793] Once, before beginning to preach, Peter expelled demons from a number of persons in the audience.[1794] In another passage is described the cure of a girl of twenty-seven who for twenty years had been vexed by an unclean spirit and had been shut up in a closet in chains because of her violence and superhuman strength. The mere presence of Peter put this demon to rout and the chains fell off the girl of their own accord.[1795] Besides these personal encounters with demons, the theory of demoniacal possession is discussed more than once, and anything of which the author does not approve, such as the art of horoscopes, heathen oracles, the excesses of pagan rites and festivals, and the animal gods of the Egyptians, is attributed to the influence of demons.[1796] One becomes susceptible to demoniacal possession who eats meat sacrificed to idols or who merely eats and drinks immoderately.[1797] Demons are apt to get into the very bowels of those who frequent drunken banquets.[1798] Incontinence, too, is accompanied by demons whose “noxious breath” produces “an intemperate and vicious progeny.... And therefore parents are responsible for their children’s defects of this sort, because they have not observed the law of intercourse.”[1799] As much care should be taken in human generation as in the sowing of crops. But while demons abound, God has given every Christian power over them, since they may be driven out by uttering “the threefold name of blessedness.”[1800] Moreover, “what is spoken by the true God, whether by prophets or varied visions, is always true; but what is foretold by demons is not always true.”[1801]

With demons is associated the origin of the magic art. “Certain angels ... taught men that demons could be made to obey man by certain arts, that is, by magical invocations.”[1802] The first magicians were Ham and his son Mesraim, from whom the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Assyrians are descended, and who tried to draw sparks from the stars[1803] but set himself on fire “and was consumed by the demon whom he had accosted with too great importunity.”[1804] But on this account he was called Zoroaster or “living star” after his death. Moreover, the magic art did not perish but was transmitted to Nimrod “as by a flash.”[1805] With this may be compared the slightly different account of the origin of magic given by Epiphanius in the Panarion, written about 374-375 A. D. Magic is older than heresy and was already in existence before the time of Ham or Mesraim in the antediluvian days of Jared, when it coexisted with “pharmacy,” a term here used to cover sorcery and poisoning, licentiousness, adultery, and injustice. After the flood Epiphanius mentions Nimrod (Νεβρώδ) as the first tyrant and the inventor of the evil disciplines of astrology and magic. He states that the Greeks incorrectly confuse him with Zoroaster whom they regard as the founder of magic and astrology. According to Epiphanius, “pharmacy” and magic passed from Egypt to Greece in the time of Cecrops.[1806]

In The Recognitions everyone, Christian, heretic, pagan, and philosopher, condemns or professes to condemn magic, and reference is made to the laws of the Roman emperors against it.[1807] But Christians, pagans, and heretics, while claiming divine power and protection for themselves, freely accuse one another of the practice of magic. An unnamed person, by whom Paul is perhaps meant, stirs up the people of Jerusalem to persecute the apostolic community there as “most miserable men, who are deceived by Simon, a magician.”[1808] The guards at the sepulcher, unable to prevent the resurrection, said that Jesus was a magician, a charge which is repeated by one of the scribes and by Simon Magus. Simon also calls Peter a magician on more than one occasion.[1809] Peter, of course, makes similar charges against Simon; he had been especially sent by James to Caesarea in order to refute this magician who was giving himself out to be the Stans or Christ.[1810] The gods of Greek mythology, too, are accused of having resorted to magic transformations and sorcery.[1811] Philosophy, however, escapes the accusation of magic in The Recognitions,[1812] and it was a philosopher who deterred Clement, before the latter had become a Christian, from his plan of investigating the problem of the immortality of the soul by hiring an Egyptian magician to evoke a soul from the infernal regions by the art of necromancy.[1813] The philosopher condemned such an attempt as unlawful, impious, and “hateful to the Divinity.”[1814]

But while magic is condemned, its great powers are admitted. Simon Magus makes great boasts of the marvels which he can perform. These include becoming invisible, boring through rocks and mountains as if they were clay, passing through fire without being burned, flying through the air, loosing bonds and barriers, transformation into animal shapes, animation of statues, production of new plants or trees in a moment, and growing beards upon little boys.[1815] He also asserted that he had formed a boy by turning air into water and the water into blood, and then solidifying this into flesh, a feat which he regarded as superior to the creation of Adam from earth. Later Simon unmade him and restored him to the air, “but not until I had placed his image and picture in my bedchamber as a proof and memorial of my work.”[1816] Not only does Simon himself make such boasts; Niceta and Aquila, who had been his disciples before their conversion by Zaccheus, also bear witness to his amazing feats. “Who would not be astonished at the wonderful things which he does? Who would not think that he was a god come down from heaven for the salvation of men?”[1817] He can fly through the air, or so mingle himself with fire as to become one body with it, he can make statues walk and dogs of brass bark. “Yea, he has also been seen to make bread of stones.”[1818] When Dositheus tried to beat Simon, the rod passed through his body as if it had been smoke.[1819] The woman called Luna who goes about with Simon was seen by a crowd to look out of all the windows of a tower at the same time,[1820] an illusion possibly produced by mirrors. When Simon fears arrest, he transforms the face of Faustinianus into the likeness of his own, in order that Faustinianus may be arrested in his place.[1821]

So great, indeed, are the marvels wrought by Simon and by magicians generally that Niceta asks Peter how they may be distinguished from divine signs and Christian miracles, and in what respect anyone sins who infers from the similarity of these signs and wonders either that Simon Magus is divine or that Christ was a magician. Speaking first of Pharaoh’s magicians, Niceta asks, “For if I had been there, should I not have thought, from the fact that the magicians did like things (to those which Moses did), either that Moses was a magician, or that the feats displayed by the magicians were divinely wrought?... But if he sins who believes those who work signs, how shall it appear that he also does not sin who has believed on our Lord for His signs and occult virtues?” Peter’s reply is that Simon’s magic does not benefit anyone, while the Christian miracles of healing the sick and expelling demons are performed for the good of humanity. To Antichrist alone among workers of magic will it be permitted at the end of the world to mix in some beneficial acts with his evil marvels. Moreover, “by this means going beyond his bounds, and being divided against himself, and fighting against himself, he shall be destroyed.”[1822] Later in The Recognitions, however, Aquila states that even the magic of the present has found ways of imitating by contraries the expulsion of demons by the word of God, that it can counteract the poisons of serpents by incantations, and can effect cures “contrary to the word and power of God.” He adds, “The magic art has also discovered ministries contrary to the angels of God, placing the evocation of souls and the figments of demons in opposition to these.”[1823]