Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Acts 8:9

But there was a certain man, called Simon, which beforetime in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one:

9. a certain man, called Simon ] From the Gk. word magos =sorcerer or magician, this man is usually spoken of as Simon Magus. According to Justin Martyr ( Apol. i. 26) he was born at Gitton, a village of Samaria. The history which is given of him after the events mentioned in this chapter describes him as persistently hostile to St Peter and as following that Apostle to Rome to oppose his teaching. But much that is related is of very doubtful authority. He is said to have been deified at Rome, but it seems probable that Justin mistook a tablet, which was discovered in the sixteenth century with an inscription “Semoni Sanco deo fidio” which was erected in honour of the Sabine Hercules, for a record of Divine honours paid to this Simon Magus.

which beforetime in the same city used sorcery ] There is no word for “same” in the original. The sorcery which Simon, and men like him, used was probably no more than a greater knowledge of some of the facts of chemistry by which they at first attracted attention and then traded on the credulity of those who came to consult them. From the time of their sojourn in Egypt the Jews had known of such impostors, and in their traditional literature some of the “wisdom” of Moses partakes of this character.

and bewitched [amazed] the people of Samaria ] The same verb is used ( Act 8:13) of the feeling produced in Simon himself by the sight of Philip’s miracles, and is there rendered “wondered.”

giving out that himself was some great one ] The general expectation that some great person was to arise among the Jews dictated the form in which impostors would proclaim themselves and aided them in procuring credence for what they said.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

But there was a certain man called Simon – The fathers have written much respecting this man, and have given strange accounts of him; but nothing more is certainly known of him than is stated in this place. Rosenmuller and Kuinoel suppose him to have been a Simon mentioned by Josephus (Antiq., book 20, chapter 7, section 2), who was born in Cyprus. He was a magician, and was employed by Felix to persuade Drusilla to forsake her husband Azizus, and to marry Felix. But it is not very probable that this was the same person. (See the note in Whistons Josephus.) Simon Magus was probably a Jew or a Samaritan, who had addicted himself to the arts of magic, and who was much celebrated for it. He had studied philosophy in Alexandria in Egypt (Mosheim, vol. i., pp. 113, 114, Murdocks translation), and then lived in Samaria. After he was cut off from the hope of adding to his other powers the power of working miracles, the fathers say that he fell into many errors, and became the founder of the sect of the Simonians. They accused him of affirming that he came down as the Father in respect to the Samaritans, the Son in respect to the Jews, and the Holy Spirit in respect to the Gentiles. He did not acknowledge Christ to be the Son of God, but a rival, and pretended himself to be Christ. He rejected the Law of Moses. Many other things are affirmed of him which rest on doubtful authority. He seems to have become an enemy to Christianity, though he was willing then to avail himself of some of its doctrines in order to advance his own interests. The account that he came to a tragical death in Rome; that he was honored as a deity by the Roman senate; and that a statue was erected to his memory in the isle of Tiber, is now generally rejected. His end is not known. (See Calmet, art. Simon Magus, and Mosheim, vol. i., p. 114, note.)

Beforetime – The practice of magic, or sorcery, was common at that time, and in all the ancient nations.

Used sorcery – Greek: mageuon. Exercising the arts of the Magi, or magicians; hence, the name Simon Magus. See the notes on Mat 2:1. The ancient Magi had their rise in Persia, and were at first addicted to the study of philosophy, astronomy, medicine, etc. This name came afterward to signify those who made use of the knowledge of these arts for the purpose of imposing on mankind – astrologers, soothsayers, necromancers, fortune-tellers, etc. Such persons pretended to predict future events by the positions of the stars, and to cure diseases by incantations, etc. See Isa 2:6. See also Dan 1:20; Dan 2:2. It was expressly forbidden the Jews to consult such persons on pain of death, Lev 19:31; Lev 20:6. In these arts Simon had been eminently successful.

And bewitched – This is an unhappy translation. The Greek means merely that he astonished or amazed the people, or confounded their judgment. The idea of bewitching them is not in the original.

Giving out … – Saying; that is, boasting. It was in this way, partly, that he so confounded them. Jugglers generally impose on people just in proportion to the extravagance and folly of their pretensions. The same remark may be made of quack doctors, and of all persons who attempt to delude and impose on people.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Act 8:9-24

But there was a certain man called Simon

Simon the Magian unmasked and put to shame

This Simon was the first heretic in the Christian Church, the first to claim its fellowship while out of sympathy with its fundamental truths.

His mistakes were many and grievous.

1. He began with an unscrupulous ambition. No sooner had Peter and John begun to confer the gifts of spiritual power by the laying on of hands than Simon saw that his own juggleries were cast into the shade. All that he perceived were the outward phenomena; the inward grace did not occur to him.

2. He was guilty, thus, of utter insincerity. His pious airs and phrases, while he worshipped with the Christians, were all make-believe. His heart was wholly unchanged; he was still an unregenerate sinner, in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity.

3. He was grievously mistaken as to the purchasing power of money. He thought that money could do anything. His mind was so utterly sordid that he was as honest as he could be in proffering coin for the sovereign gifts of God. There are men in our times who seem to have a like confidence in filthy lucre. Their very souls grow yellow as they bow before their wretched golden god. They subordinate all things to persona[ gain. Friendship, beneficence, patriotism, and piety are of value only, as they can be made to serve their selfish ends.

4. He was a blasphemer. He should have been appalled at the mere thought of tampering with the influence of the Divine Spirit; but fools rush in where angels fear to tread. God was nothing to him, and sacred things were of value only to grind at his mill. It is well that Peter and John had the courage to unmask this miserable impostor. There is no telling what harm he might have done otherwise in the early Church. As it is, he vanishes from our sight cringing under a terrific warning and whining for an intercession which, had it been offered, would have seemed to him only another of the apostles masterly conjurations. Farewell to him! And may no disciple of his ever again pollute the pure atmosphere of the Church of God! (D. J. Burrell, D. D.)

Christianity true and false

I. The traits of a true Christianity.

1. It has growth. A true gospel has germinative power; it propagates itself; it is a seed which springs up wherever it is dropped, whether in Judea, Samaria, or Antioch.

2. It has breadth. It overcomes the prejudices of race and nation, breaks the bounds of sect, and brings Jews and Samaritans into one fellowship.

3. It has power (verse 7). The physical miracles of the apostolic age were pictures of spiritual power in all ages. Even now the gospel drives out unclean spirits and gives power to the impotent. Men can see the results of its power though they may not understand its source.

4. It brings joy (verse 8). Every soul truly converted tastes the joy of salvation, and is glad with an indwelling happiness.

5. It has discipline (verses 14-16). The Church recognises a central authority, to which all its workers are loyal.

6. It has high moral standards, which are not framed to suit base natures nor influenced by worldly considerations (verses 20-23).

II. The traits of a false Christianity. Even in the true Church, and in its purest days, there was to be found a Simon the sorcerer.

1. The false Christianity is often concealed under the formal rites of the Church service. Outwardly Simon was a baptised member, inwardly he was a hypocrite.

2. It is revealed in the spiritual manifestations of the Church. When the Holy Ghost descends, Simon is at once detected.

3. Its spirit is that of selfish ambition, seeking for power over men rather than power with God.

4. It should be dealt with promptly, rebuked unsparingly, and should find no countenance in the Church.

5. It may find mercy and forgiveness if the false disciple will seek the Lord.

Simon Magus, or wrong-heartedness

This short sketch reminds us–

1. That men in every age have been prone to deify great wickedness.

2. That great wickedness, to answer its end, has often identified itself with religion.

3. That true religion exposes all such imposture. We take Simon as the representative of wrong-heartedness.

Note–

I. Its essence–covetousness. He offered them money.

In relation to this observe that–

1. It is opposed to mental improvement. It necessarily blinds the eye and limits the intellectual horizon: whereas benevolence elevates the mind, gives vastness to the view, and places every object in the full light of heaven.

2. It is condemned by moral consciousness. There is a principle within which is an infallible indicator of the souls health, and this ever condemns covetousness, The selfish man wears out his self-respect, and stands before God and himself a wretched man.

3. It is condemned by the verdict of society. Society may flatter but it cannot respect a covetous man. Hence men assume the features and speak the language of benevolence.

4. It is incompatible with moral order. This requires one-ness, mutual attraction. But selfishness repels from one another and from God.

5. It is denounced by Scripture. Covetousness is declared to be idolatry, against which as the most revolting form of depravity the heaviest judgments are denounced.

II. Its tendency–ruin. This is no constitutional infirmity claiming palliation, but a disease of the heart. As in physics, so in morals, if the heart be wrong the most serious consequences are imminent. The text reminds us of three evils.

1. It involves the greatest sacrifice, Thy money perish with thee. Peter took it for granted that he would perish. A good mans money lives in its consequences.

2. It precludes an interest in religion, Thou has neither part nor lot, etc., i.e., in Christianity with its glorious doctrines, promises, and provisions.

3. It necessitates great personal wretchedness. Covetousness is at once–

(1) A hitter gall, and

(2) A slavish life, bonds.

III. Its cure.

1. Prescribed.

(1) Repentance–a change in the controlling disposition.

(2) Prayer–conscious dependence upon God.

(3) Forgiveness. Covetousness is a sin against God, and for it a sinner must be either forgiven or damned. Repentance and prayer are essential to pardon.

2. Ignored. Simon did not attend to the heavenly prescription. He did not repent of his sin although he deplored its consequences lie did not pray for himself, but he asked Peter to pray for him, and not that his heart might be changed, but that the consequence of his sin might be averted. Observe the two evils ever prevalent in false religions.

(1) Selfishness. To avoid misery is the leading idea in the religion of millions.

(2) Proxyism. The tendency to trust others in religious matters is the foundation of all ecclesiastical imposture and the great curse of the world. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

Simon the sorcerer

Look at–

I. The condition in which Philip found the city of Samaria. You find there the condition of the whole world represented. Samaria was diseased, possessed, and deluded. These are the conditions in which Christianity has always to fight its great battle. Christianity never finds any town prepared to co-operate with it. We are none of us by nature prepared to give the Christian teacher a candid hearing. We hate the fellow, for he never prophesies good of us. The literary lecturer pays homage to his audience, but the preacher rebukes it, humbles it. The early preachers did not trim, and balance, and smooth things. It was because they did fundamental work that they made progress so slow, but so sure. The world is–

1. Diseased–there is not a man who is thoroughly and completely well. If he suppose himself to be so, he is so only for the moment; he was ill yesterday, or will be to-morrow. You stand up in the mere mockery of strength; it is when we lie down that we assume the proper and final attitude of the body. How ill we are, what aches and pains!

2. Possessed. Possessed with demons, unclean spirits, false ideas. Why make a marvel about demoniacal possession, or push it back some twenty centuries? We are all devil-ridden. Out of Christ we are mad!

3. Deluded. Samaria was bewitched. Understand that somebody has to lead the world. In republicanism there is a sovereignty. In a mob there is a captaincy. There is only one question worth discussing so far as the future is concerned, and that is who is to rule. To-day you find men making churches for the future. You might as well make clothes for the future. My question is, who is to be the man, the life, the sovereign of the future? Christ, or Simon? As Christians we have no difficulty about the result.

II. Philips course in Samaria.

1. He took no notice of Simon. There are some persons who think we ought to send missionaries to argue down the infidels. Let us do nothing so foolish. There is nothing to be argued down. Argument is the weakest of all weapons. If occasion should naturally arise for the answering of some sophistical argument, avail yourselves of it, but do not imagine that Christianity has to go down to Samaria to fight a pitched battle, face to face with Simon Magus.

2. He preached Christ. Simon had been preaching himself. Philip never mentioned himself. Thus Philip did not argue down Simon, he superseded him. The daylight does not argue with the artificial light. The sun does not say, Let us talk this matter over, thou little, beautiful, artificial jet. Let us be candid with one another, and polite to one another, and let us treat one another as gentlemen talking on equal terms. Let us thus see which of us ought to rule the earth. The sun does nothing but shine! What then! Men put the gas out! Let your light so shine before men, etc. (J. Parker, D. D.)

Simon the sorcerer

The phases of human conduct do little more than repeat themselves along the ages. There is nothing new under the sun. Dugald Stewart remarks, In reflecting on the repeated reproduction of ancient paradoxes by modern authors, one is almost tempted to suppose that human invention is limited, like a barrel-organ, to a specific number of tunes. A period of deep religious and emotional feeling is always apt to be accompanied by a superstitious and mystical craving. Stephens martyrdom brings to light two typical characters at once; Saul with harassing persecutions, and Simon with delusions calculated to deceive even the elect, and the spurious professor was more dangerous than the violent foe. Note from the story that–

I. Mere working of wonders does not prove that a man comes from God. For the marvellous performances may not be miracles at all. In every age founders of religious systems have attempted what silly people have accepted as veritable interpositions of God. Human credulity is swift to assert that what is mysterious is divine. So fortune-tellers, spiritualists, necromancers, and quacks have swayed men and led women captive.

II. Miracles are at the best only evidences of Christianity. Of themselves, they never converted a soul. The genuine wonders wrought by Philip mocked this magician; as in Moses time, there was one supreme limit beyond which no human sleight of hand could go. Simon astonished, but Philip healed. So they left the impostor and went over to the Christian deacon in a body (verse 12). Not that Philip was more eloquent or persuasive than Simon; not that his miracles stirred them more; but Philip preached Christ. Marvels arrest the mind, and that is in demand when audiences are dull;: but it is the Spirit of grace only who touches the heart. How curious it must have appeared to those spiritually-minded converts that Simon Magus at last came over into the Church.

III. The best method in dealing with error is to proclaim the truth, and leave results to God. We are to advance the banner of Jesus Christ right out into the field brightly as if we trusted it, and most opponents will melt away before the mere marching of Gods host, without even a skirmish (verse 13).

IV. It is generally prudent to wait for a little before admitting untested persons into Church membership. It is a most interesting question, to be decided according to individual and local circumstances, how long one is to be delayed in ascertaining his own mind before he becomes publicly committed. These incidents are worth study in our modern times; for if the apostles could be deceived, it is possible for Church officers now.

V. Growth in spiritual graces renders one more gentle in feeling and more charitable to others (verses 14, 15). The apostolic company at Jerusalem were glad to hear what the Lord was doing, and Peter and John went over to the scene of action, and began to pray that God would bestow the gift of His Spirit. We cannot forget that the last wish of Johns concerning the Samaritans was that fire might fall on them (Luk 9:52-56). He was older now, and kinder, and gentler.

VI. Order ought to be observed in the official organisation of the Church (verse 17). These little significant forms are not to be lightly esteemed. The people had received that gift of the Holy Ghost by which their hearts had been renewed; but not the extraordinary gift by which they could work miracles. There was no physical transmission of anything in this laying on of hands; it was a mere sign. And it is not likely that all converted persons in Samaria were endowed with this superior gift; some discrimination must have been made according to fitnesses of character or grades of office (1Co 12:8-11).

VII. Every sin has its measure of deserved retribution, and meets its appropriate monument (verses 18-20). This hypocrites fate it has been to add a new word to our language; so, everywhere the Bible goes, that wicked thing which he did is held in everlasting remembrance.

VIII. The essence of a sin resides in the intention: (verse 22). Solemn admonition is given in the intimation that a wicked man is held responsible for his thought (Isa 55:7). Peters expression would look like a curse, if it were not for the suggestion that repentance and prayer might yet find the door open for pardon.

IX. Profession of religion is not real piety. (American Sunday School Times.)

Simon the sorcerer, an admonitory example of a false teacher

I. He gave himself out to be some great one. False teachers do not seek the glory of God, but their own.

II. He bewitched the people. False teachers seek to dazzle by popular arts, instead of enlightening and converting.

III. He believed, was baptized, and continued with Philip. Thus the unbelieving often speak the language of Canaan, because they observe that it is effective; and contract a hypocritical bond of fellowship with the servants of God, in order to cover their foul stains with the cloak of pretended sanctity. (K. Gerok.)

Simon Magus and Simon Peter

I. Simon the upright.

1. As a zealous servant of his Lord whom he serves everywhere with joy, in Samaria as in Jerusalem.

2. As an earnest admonisher of sins, which he reproves with holy zeal.

3. As a faithful guide to the way of salvation by repentance and prayer, which he knew from his own experience.

II. Simon the impure.

1. In the lying nature of his heathen magic.

2. In the hypocrisy of his deceitful Christianity.

3. In the defective nature of his superficial repentance. (K. Gerok.)

Saul, Simon, and Philip

I. The upright enemy.

II. The false friend.

III. The faithful servant of the Lord. Each indicated according to the disposition of his heart, his manner of acting and his fate. (K. Gerok.)

The sin of Simon

On a general view of this passage, notice–

I. The difference between the gospel, miracles and those of a mere magician like this Simon.

1. Power by itself is an ambiguous sign. There are other powers in the world besides Gods. Powers which have broken loose from Him, which oppose Him, and which He permits, for a time, for the trial of His people, and for the overthrow of His foes. Such a power was that exercised by this sorcerer. It came for the exaltation of a creature; to make beholders say, This man is the great power of God. It did not come to attest anything–to say, I have a message for you from God; and if you ask how you are to know that it is from God, this is the sign. That is the true use of power, in connection with Divine truth. It ought to come as the third part of Gods triple seal: first goodness, then wisdom, then power. That was the use which Jesus Christ made of power. This has never been the order of an impostor. He may astound and bewitch men with sorceries: but he will never succeed in counterfeiting those other parts of Gods seal, which the truly wise will wait for before they call either him or his the great power of God.

2. We are all in danger of too much worshipping power. Money is power, and talent, and rank, and office, and knowledge. But all these are of the earth, and will perish with it. Power-worship is too often devil-worship. Let the power you worship be all Gods power. You will know it by its signs; by its pointing upwards; by its drawing you towards God; by its making the unseen world real to you, and the world of show and semblance less attractive.

II. The existence of a visible as well as an invisible Church. We see how men fight against this truth. Men have been weary of the formality and hypocrisy and heartlessness which had taken possession of the visible fold, and have sought to go apart with a few, of whose consistency and devotion they could be assured. But there was a Simon Magus baptized by Philip the Evangelist, and recognised as a member of the Christian community by two of the apostles themselves. Let both grow together until the harvest, is the rule of Divine wisdom as much as of Divine forbearance. If you attempt to judge, you will err both ways: you will often be taken in by loud profession, you will oftener be driven into uncharitableness, into injury of souls. While the day of grace lasts, we must shut out from hope and from privilege no one who desires and claims either. And if others were to sit in judgment upon us, where should we be? We need patience, but we need severity too; patience from others, severity from ourselves, and a union of both from God.

III. This particular sin which requires in the case before us so stern a reproof. Simon offered money to the apostles to share their gift with him. He would purchase the Holy Ghost with money. The very idea is blasphemy. The law of this land calls a particular offence, that of buying and selling sacred offices in the ministry, by a name derived from that of this man, Simony. But this is not the only nor the chief sense in which we can be guilty of the sin of Simon. Simon had that mercenary mind which St. Paul calls the root of all evil. He thought that money could do everything. He deified money. Knowing what it was to him; how he taught, practised sorcery, and aimed at popularity, and set himself up as some great one for money; he took it for granted that every one else regarded money in the same way. Alas! let him that is without sin among you in this matter cast the first stone at him! If there are none now who seek to buy Gods gifts with money, at least are there not some who consent to sell their own souls for money? Oh these dishonesties in trade, in speculation, in trusts, yes, even in charity! If we really cared for Gods gifts, I can even fancy that some of us might offer money for them. If we do not offer money for Gods gifts, is it not because we care ten thousand times more for things which money can purchase? But I will tell you what no money can buy: it cannot buy any one of Gods highest gifts; it cannot even buy health, eyesight, comeliness, affection, repose of conscience, hope in death, or a single ray of the love of God. And therefore a man who learns by long habit to think that money is everything, is as much what the Scripture calls a fool, as he is what the Scripture counts a sinner. The sin of Simon is the being altogether of the earth, and yet expecting to have heaven too. It is the bringing all that is base and mean and corruptible, and expecting to receive–not in exchange for it, but along with it–all that is spiritual and eternal and Divine. To such a spirit it may well be said, Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter, etc. (Dean Vaughan.)

The sin of Simon; or trading in holy things

The way in which the Holy Ghost is introduced here throws light upon apostolic usages and upon problems of Christian life in all ages. Compare Act 19:1-7, in which, however, there is a difference, inasmuch as the disciples had not advanced beyond the teaching of John. They had not so much as heard of the Holy Ghost. The Samaritans were favoured with distinctive Christian teaching and baptism, but lacked that experience which we identify with conversion, viz., the receiving of the Holy Spirit. This, alas, is not peculiar to that age. Multitudes now are Christians, and yet not Christians. Strange paradox! Many become Christians by persuasion, conform to rites, live moral lives, without attaining consciousness of Divine sonship. We are not justified in excluding such from our assemblies; but their condition is full of danger, and renders them liable to fall into the gravest sins. To all such let Simon be a warning. As to his offence, notice–

I. What it was.

1. An insult to God. It could not have been the unpardonable sin, however, since the apostle holds out hope of forgiveness; but it may have been one of those sins which prepare for and predispose to it.

(1) It betrays a low estimate of the Holy Spirit. One who could speak as Simon did must have regarded Him very cheap! No more than a piece of sordid merchandise! Of a like character are all conceptions of monopolising spiritual privileges, of selling or buying such, or of bribing God by money, good works, etc.

(2) It was a contradiction of the principle on which the gospel is based–grace not works–that no man might boast or presume. Grace is the ground not of pardon only, but of every Divine gift.

2. A desire through Christianity to aggrandise self. Spiritual life springs from, and consists in, the crucifixion of self. In Simon self was alive and rampant. With him as with so many professors it was self first and God and righteousness afterwards. Every Christian worker should examine his heart and see whether he is serving self or the Master.

II. How he fell into it. This can never be fully answered; it is a part of the mystery of iniquity. But note–

1. His previous life tended to lead him into such an error. He was a magician. One who blended the mystical doctrines of Eastern wisdom with the practice of sorcery, and prepared the way for the subsequent monstrous growths of heresy, called by the general name of Gnosticism.

2. He had not yet fully understood the gospel. Probably he had learnt only a few of its doctrines, and those only imperfectly.

3. He was inwardly a stranger to Divine grace. He had not yet been converted. This defect is at the root of most heresies.

III. Its punishment–destruction.

1. Imminent and impending. The sentence was not only uttered by the apostle, it was inherent in the sin itself.

2. Graciously postponed. His might have been the fate of Korah and Ananias, etc. God gave him space for repentance. (St. J. A. Frere, M. A.)

Simony

The traffic in Church matters and spiritual gifts.

I. From what it proceeds–a covetous and ambitious heart. As Simon was for so long held in estimation and had bewitched the people, but was now displaced by the Christian evangelists, so he now resolved to regain his old status by money. Thus have all, who by impure means attempt to force themselves into the ministry, no other designs than to serve the idols of honour, sensuality, or mammon. On this account the Church has regarded Simon as the father of heresies and the type of sectarianism; for the mainspring of almost all founders of sects is love of power, which, united with arrogance, by its audacity and hypocrisy, bewitches the people cleaving to externals.

II. What it supposes. A bitter and unrighteous heart. His heart was full of gall, i.e., envy towards the apostles, and the preference given to their preaching above his arts; of unrighteousness, for notwithstanding his Christian profession he would be no follower of the Cross, but a proud miracle worker. He apparently attached himself to the apostles, but in heart was offended at them. Hence hypocrisy. He thought to bewitch these servants of Jesus with money as he had bewitched the people with magic, and himself with honour and mammon. Consequently unrighteousness towards the apostles, and a low estimation of their office and persons. Envy and jealousy, an earthly disposition and a low estimation of the ministry and its office bearers, mark even still the followers of Simon.

III. At what it aims. Not grace, but power. He did not wish to save souls by the preaching of the gospel, but only to acquire for himself a name by deeds of supernatural might. In this are all like him who desire the office but not the grace: who have in view not the service of Christ, but personal dignity and prerogative; and those, too, who are covetous of gifts for the office–learning, eloquence, etc.

but dispense with the qualification of holiness (Luk 10:20).

IV. How it acts. Simon offered money. Few offer actual money, now, for the ministerial office, but many employ means no less base. How often must this or that patron be gained over by crooked ways 1 How often is the office converted into a marriage portion!

V. What it entails. Simon along with his wicked designs retained a slavish fear of Divine punishment. He dreads damnation but will not have salvation. So all Simonists are slaves. They carry about them an evil conscience, and can have no true freedom in their ministry. (G. V. Lechler, D. D.)

The fortune hunter

We see here–

1. The power of ignorance. Simon used sorcery and the people were bewitched. Society in all ages is troubled by these artful characters, and strange to say people are ever ready to submit to them.

2. The power of religion. The sorcerer and his dupes believed the gospel. At dawn the unclean animals of the night flee to their dens; so gospel light chases away the morally unclean. We notice–

I. The duty of the Church towards the ungodly (verse 14). Wherever the primitive Church found a tendency toward the truth, they were ready to help. The true spirit of the gospel removes all party walls. Jew and Samaritan, black and white, etc., are all brethren according to the New Testament. Let us follow His example Who came to seek and to save the lost.

II. The existence of good and evil in the Church Judas was among the twelve, false teachers were at Corinth, etc., heretics abounded in the early churches, superstition was rampant in the Middle Ages, strange errors abounded in reformed communities. Why? Because of the limited knowledge of men. Christ likened His kingdom to a net full of fishes–good and bad. The Church may suspect many, but to select is dangerous, because of the imperfect knowledge of the selectors. The Church is often censured because of its imperfections, but, its enemies being witnesses, it is the best of moral schools.

III. In the life of men there are events which exhibit the master principle (verse 18). Simon saw here an opportunity of making his fortune. A bad man may go through the routine of Christian duties, deceiving and deceived, but some event will happen which will discover the inner man. This will not be usually in great public matters, but in small things connected with the home or shop. Simon was one of those fortune hunters which are so numerous to-day, whose God is Mammon, whose Bible the Ledger, and whose creed Gain. A quite incidental circumstance, of whose issue in an opposite direction he was quite sure, found him out. Thus the devil makes fools of the wisest.

IV. When the evil is found out it is the duty of the Church to reform it. Peters conduct is an example to the Church in all ages, and teaches us that church discipline should be administered–

1. Impartially. God is no respecter of persons. Simons policy had paid him well; he was rich and powerful. But Peter cared nothing for his position. Woe to the Church which palliates evil because of the social status of the offender. Achan in the camp means disaster in the field.

2. Compassionately. Though Peter spoke the truth frankly, he opened up the path to mercy (Gal 6:1).

V. Bad men when disciplined will often have their own way. Peter told Simon to repent and pray, but Simon only wanted immunity from punishment in his own wicked course. So now God offers pardon on certain conditions, but men refuse the conditions, and go on pleasure seeking, mammon worshipping, hoping that at last some good mans prayer will secure mercy. (W. A. G.)

Sudden conversions not always genuine

Fish sometimes leap out of the water with great energy, but it would be foolish to conclude that they have left the liquid element for ever; in a moment they are swimming again as if they had never forsaken the stream; indeed it was but a fly that tempted them aloft, or a sudden freak: the water is still their home, sweet home. When we see long accustomed sinners making a sudden leap at religion, we may not make too sure that they are converts; perhaps some gain allures them, or sudden excitement stirs them, and if so they will be back again at their old sins. Let us hope well, trot let us not commend too soon. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 9. A certain man called Simon] In ancient ecclesiastical writers, we have the strangest account of this man; they say that he pretended to be the Father, who gave the law to Moses; that he came in the reign of Tiberius in the person of the Son; that he descended on the apostles on the day of pentecost, in flames of fire, in quality of the Holy Spirit; that he was the Messiah, the Paraclete, and Jupiter; that the woman who accompanied him, called Helena, was Minerva, or the first intelligence; with many other extravagancies which probably never had an existence. All that we know to be certain on this subject is, that he used sorcery, that he bewitched the people, and that he gave out himself to be some great one.

This might be sufficient, were not men prone to be wise above what is written.

Our word sorcerer, from the French sorcier, which, from the Latin sors, a lot, signifies the using of lots to draw presages concerning the future; a custom that prevailed in all countries, and was practised with a great variety of forms. On the word lot see Clarke’s note, “Le 16:8; “Le 16:9“; and Jos 14:2.

The Greek word, , signifies practising the rites or science of the Magi, or [Persic] Mughan, the worshippers of fire among the Persians; the same as [Arabic] Majoos, and [Arabic] Majooseean, from which we have our word magician. See Clarke on Mt 2:1.

And bewitched the people of Samaria] , Astonishing, amazing, or confounding the judgment of the people, from to remove out of a place or state, to be transported beyond one’s self, to be out of one’s wits; a word that expresses precisely the same effect which the tricks or legerdemain of a juggler produce in the minds of the common people who behold his feats. It is very likely that Simon was a man of this cast, for the east has always abounded in persons of this sort. The Persian, Arabian, Hindoo, and Chinese jugglers are notorious to the present day; and even while I write this, (July, 1813,) three Indian jugglers, lately arrived, are astonishing the people of London; and if such persons can now interest and amaze the people of a city so cultivated and enlightened, what might not such do among the grosser people of Sychem or Sebaste, eighteen hundred years ago?

That himself was some great one.] That the feats which he performed sufficiently proved that he possessed a most powerful supernatural agency, and could do whatsoever he pleased.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Used sorcery; magical enchantments, as a wizard.

Bewitched the people; caused them, as men in an ecstasy, to be amazed at and afraid of him.

Some great one; as if he had been God, or at least had some great favour with him, and had received some extraordinary power from him. Ecclesiastical histories speak much of him, and tell us that he had a statue set up in Rome for him, inscribed, To Simon the holy God.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

9-13. used sorcerymagicalarts.

some great one . . . thegreat power of Goda sort of incarnation of divinity.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

But there was a certain man called Simon,…. Who, as Justin Martyr f says, was a Samaritan, and of a village called Gitton; and so a Jewish writer g calls him Simeon, , “the Samaritan”, a wizard: here is a

but upon this new church, the success of the Gospel in this place, and the joy that was there; a man of great wickedness and sophistry plays the hypocrite, feigns himself a believer, and gets in among them; [See comments on Ac 5:1],

which beforetime in the same city used sorcery; who before Philip came thither, practised magic arts; wherefore he is commonly called “Simon Magus”, for he was a magician, who had learned diabolical arts, and used enchantments and divinations, as Balaam and the magicians of Egypt did:

and bewitched the people of Samaria; or rather astonished them, with the strange feats he performed; which were so unheard of and unaccountable, that they were thrown into an ecstasy and rapture; and were as it were out of themselves, through wonder and admiration, at the amazing things that were done by him:

giving out that himself was some great one; a divine person, or an extraordinary prophet, and it may be the Messiah; since the Samaritans expected the Messiah, as appears from Joh 4:25 and which the Syriac version seems to incline to, which renders the words thus, “and he said, I am that great one”; that great person, whom Moses spake of as the seed of the “woman”, under the name of Shiloh, and the character of a prophet.

f Apolog. 2. p. 69. g Juchasin, fol. 242. 2.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Simon (). One of the common names (Josephus, Ant. XX. 7, 2) and a number of messianic pretenders had this name. A large number of traditions in the second and third centuries gathered round this man and Baur actually proposed that the Simon of the Clementine Homilies is really the apostle Paul though Paul triumphed over the powers of magic repeatedly (Acts 13:6-12; Acts 19:11-19), “a perfect absurdity” (Spitta, Apostelgeschichte, p. 149). One of the legends is that this Simon Magus of Acts is the father of heresy and went to Rome and was worshipped as a god (so Justin Martyr). But a stone found in the Tiber A.D. 1574 has an inscription to Semoni Sanco Deo Fidio Sacrum which is (Page) clearly to Hercules, Sancus being a Sabine name for Hercules. This Simon in Samaria is simply one of the many magicians of the time before the later gnosticism had gained a foothold. “In his person Christianity was for the first time confronted with superstition and religious imposture, of which the ancient world was at this period full” (Furneaux).

Which beforetime used sorcery ( ). An ancient idiom (periphrastic), the present active participle with the imperfect active verb from , the idiom only here and Lu 23:12 in the N.T. Literally “Simon was existing previously practising magic.” This old verb is from (a , seer, prophet, false prophet, sorcerer) and occurs here alone in the N.T.

Amazed (existanon). Present active participle of the verb , later form of , to throw out of position, displace, upset, astonish, chiefly in the Gospels in the N.T. Same construction as .

Some great one ( ). Predicate accusative of general reference (infinitive in indirect discourse). It is amazing how gullible people are in the presence of a manifest impostor like Simon. The Magi were the priestly order in the Median and Persian empires and were supposed to have been founded by Zoroaster. The word (magi) has a good sense in Mt 2:1, but here and in Ac 13:6 it has the bad sense like our “magic.”

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

Used sorcery [] . Only here in New Testament. One of the wizards so numerous throughout the East at that time, and multiplied by the general expectation of a great deliverer and the spread of the Messianic notions of the Jews, who practiced upon the credulity of the people by conjuring and juggling and soothsaying.

Bewitched [] . Better as Rev., amazed. See on ch. Act 2:7.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

Covetous Heart of Simon the Sorcerer V. 9-25

1) “But there was a certain man, called Simon,” (aner de tis onomati Simon) “Then there was (existed) a certain one (a particular person) named Simon;” This is a literal account of a specific man in the capital city of Samaria, a man well known, of influence among them, Act 8:10-11. He was known in history as Simon Magus, mentioned by Josephus.

2) “Which beforetime in the same city used sorcery,” (prouperchen en te polei mageuon) “Who was previously practicing sorcery in the city,” a magician, trickster, skilled in the arts of deception thru optical illusion, magic arts, making things to appear different from reality by a form of legerdemain, a vulgar deceiver, as in Act 13:6.

3) “And bewitched the people of Samaria,” (kai ekistanon to ethnos tes Samareias) “And he was continually astonishing the nation or race of people of Samaria,” as a people hero, as Elymas the Sorcerer did at Paphos later, on the island of Cyprus, Act 13:6-12.

4) “Giving out that himself was some great one: (legon einai tina heautou megan) “Continually advertising himself to be someone great,” a near god to them, receiving without any disclaimer, honor as if he was God, much as Herod later permitted of himself, Act 12:21-23; Contrast Philip’s preaching Jesus to them and to the Ethiopian Eunuch, with Simon’s preaching himself as one great as a prophet or Messiah, as false prophets and deceitful workers operate, 2Co 11:13-15; Act 8:5; Act 8:35; Rev 2:20.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

9. A certain man named Simon. This was such a let that it might seem that the gospel could have no passage to come unto the Samaritans; for the minds of them all were bewitched with Simon’s jugglings. And this amazedness was grown to some strength by reason of long space of time. Furthermore experience teacheth what a hard matter it is to pluck that error out of the minds of men which hath taken root through long continuance and to call them back unto a sound and right mind who are already hardened. Superstition made them more obstinate in their error, because they counted Simon not only as a prophet of God, but even as the Spirit of God.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

CRITICAL REMARKS

Act. 8:9. Simon.Not the Cyprian Jew of that name whom, according to Josephus (Ant., XX. vii. 2), Felix afterwards employed to persuade Drusilla to leave for him her husband. King Azizus of Emesa (De Wette, Neander, Hilgenfeld, Alford), but, according to Justin Martyr (Apol., i. 56; Dial., 120), a Samaritan magician out of Gitthon (Zeller, Holtzmann, Zckler). The people.Should be, the nation, , because Simons bewitchery was not confined to the city population.

Act. 8:10. The great power of God, in the best MSS., is the power of God which is called greati.e., because it is so (Hackett), rather than because it is not so (De Wette). Noticeable that this was the peoples estimate of Simon. In the term Great has been found either Gnostic emanation doctrine (Overbeck), or a transliteration of the Samaritan word Magala, Revealer (Klostermann, Wendt).

Act. 8:11. Of long time.The dative for the ordinary accusative as in Act. 13:20; Joh. 2:20; Rom. 16:25. Simons influence may have reached back to a period shortly after our Lords visit to Samaria (Joh. 4:39-42).

Act. 8:13. Wondered, or was amazed at Philips miracles and signsRather, signs and great powersi.e., deeds of power, as previously the crowd had been amazed at his (Simons) sorceries (Act. 8:9).

HOMILETICAL ANALYSIS.Act. 8:9-13

The Accession of Simon Magus; or, the Reception of a Doubtful Convert

I. The previous history of Simon Magus.

1. His profession. A sorcerer. According to Justin Martyr (Apol., I. xxvi. 56) belonging to the Samaritan village of Gitton. One of those unscrupulous adventurers who by an advanced knowledge of natural philosophy, especially of chemistry, acquired a strange power and influence over mens minds, which they constantly used to further their own selfish ends (Spence). Others of the same kidney were Elymas, whom Paul encountered at the court of Sergius Paulus in Paphos (Act. 13:6), and the vagabond Jews, exorcists, whom he met at Ephesus (Act. 19:13). To this fraternity belonged Apollonius, of Tyana, who lived in the time of Christ. A zealous champion of the doctrines of Pythagoras, he was regarded by his contemporaries as a worker of miracles, and claimed for himself insight into futurity. Josephus (Ant., XX. vii. 2) mentions another Simon, also of Cyprus, unless he was identical with the Simon of Samaria, as a magician who persuaded Drusilla to desert her husband and marry Felix (Act. 24:24). That Simon pitched on Samaria as the field of his operations may have been due to the circumstance that it contained a grand heathen temple, which he probably thought would make the city so much the fitter a scene for his magical incantations (see Stokes on Acts, i. 360, note).

2. His practice. He bewitched or amazed the people with his sorceries, either imposed on their credulity by sleight of hand, or dazzled their judgment by feats performed through superior knowledge. What the arts practised by him were is not related. Later tradition represents him as having offered to demonstrate his divinity by flying in the air (Constt. Apost., ii. 14, vi. 9), and as having boasted that he could turn himself and others into brute beasts, and even cause statues to speak (Clem. Hom., iv. c. 4; Recog., ii. 9, iii. 6). Whether he had attempted any such legerdemain in Samaria or not is uncertain; but for a long time (most likely for a number of years) he had cast a spell over their minds and secured their attention to his superstitious and hurtful doctrines. He is said to have denied the resurrection of the dead, and only pretended to believe in a future judgment, to have desired to set Gorizim in place of Jerusalem, and to have allegorically expounded the Old Testament so as to support his own views.

3. His pretension. He gave out that himself was some great one. Like Theudas, he boasted that he was somebody (Act. 5:36). According to the Clementine Homilies (ii. 22 ff.) he gave himself out for the Highest Power, from which he distinguished the Creator of the world as an inferior being, and also claimed to be the Messiah. In this he showed himself a precursor of Antichrist (2Th. 2:4). Exaltation of self is both an old (Gen. 3:5) and a common (Luk. 14:11) sin, against which men in general (Jer. 9:23; Dan. 4:37), and Christians in particular (Gal. 6:3), are earnestly warned.

4. His popularity. To him the whole population gave heed from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is that power of God which is called great. Few things are more incontestable or sad than the gullibility of mankind. Gullible, however, by fit apparatus, all publics are, and gulled with the most surprising profit (Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, p. 68). The remarkable thing is that almost any sort of tomfoolery, mountebankism, and charlatanry will do to cheat men. No imposture is too ridiculous to find adherents. No quack is so vulgar that he cannot draw around him admiring fools: Simon is reported to have visited Rome in the time of Claudius, and by means of his jugglery to have established himself so highly in popular favour that the Senate decreed him divine honours, and a statue on the island of the Tiber (Justin Martyr, Apol., I. xxvi, 56); and it is not a little remarkable that in the exact spot indicated by Justin, in 1574, there was dug up a statue with the inscription Semoni Sanco Deo Fidio, though whether this statue was the one referred to by Justin, or another to a Sabine deity, critics are not agreed.

II. The circumstances which led to Simons conversion.

1. The preaching of Philip. It is clear from the narrative that Simon himself must have been amongst Philips listeners, since it is stated that he himself also believed Philip preaching good tidings, etc. (Act. 8:12-13). Faith cometh by hearing (Rom. 10:17). Faith that is not based upon the word of God either read or preached lacks a solid foundation, and will ultimately prove unstable and unreal.

2. The faith of the people. The example of the Samaritans operated contagiously on Simon. Observing them falling away from himself and rallying round Philip, he followed in their wake. The event showed he had not been savingly impressed by what he saw and heard, but only superficially stirred. Nevertheless the popular attitude towards Philip appears to have awakened in him something that resembled faith. A similar phenomenon is not unknown in modern religious movements, which draw in and sweep along with them many who are only superficially stirred, not permanently converted.

3. The baptism of the believers. Both men and women avowed the sincerity of their conversion by submitting to the initiatory rite of the Christian religion; and this also must have had its effect upon Simon, and led him to reflect that a greater power than that wielded by himself had arrived upon the scene.

III. The evidence of Simons (supposed) conversion.

1. His profession of faith. He believed. This the first requirement in a disciple. Whatever else may be demanded of Christians, they must repose personal credit in the testimony concerning Christ, and personal trust in Christ Himself.

2. His submission to baptism. In the case of an adult who believes for the first time, this also is indispensable (Mar. 16:16; Act. 2:38), though it does not show Infant Baptism to be either unscriptural or unreasonable (see on Act. 2:39).

3. His adherence to Philip. He continued with the deacon and those associated with him; in modern phraseology, he joined the Church, or connected himself with the main body of believers. This a third mark of conversion. The fellowship of saints all Christs followers are expected to cultivate. The Christian life (under certain circumstances) may be successfully maintained in isolation; but in no case without difficulty.

4. His admiration of Philips miracles. The works of healing wrought by Philip appeared to convince him that what he only pretended to wield, and what the people imagined he wielded, was wielded by Philip in realityviz., the great power of God. Whether Simons conversion was genuine or not, it had many of the marks of a true work of grace. Note in illustration.Philetus, a disciple of Hermogenes the conjurer, coming to a dispute with St. James the elder, relied much upon his sophistry; but the apostle preached Christ to him with such powerfulness that Philetus, returning back to his master, told him, I went forth a conjurer, but am returned a Christian.

Learn.

1. That all professors of religion are not true converts.
2. That the gospel has in it something which attracts even bad men.
3. That nothing can so effectually deliver men from this present evil world, with its snares and delusions, as the gospel of Christ.
4. That faith in Christ should ever be accompanied by public confession.
5. That the best arguments in proof of Christianity are the moral and spiritual miracles it performs.

HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS

Act. 8:12. A Reformed City.

The conversion of the Samaritans was brought about

I. By the preaching of the gospel, the good news of salvation.

II. With the concurrence of the people, from the least to the greatest.

III. In spite of the greatest opposition from the powers of darkness.

IV. With the most satisfactory results: numerous baptisms of men and women.

Good Tidings.

I. Concerning Gods kingdom.

1. That it had come (Mat. 3:2; Mar. 1:13).

2. That it might be entered (Mat. 5:20; Mat. 7:13).

3. That all who entered it should be saved (Joh. 10:9).

II. Concerning Gods Son.

1. That He had been the bringer-in of the kingdom by His death and resurrection (Act. 1:3).

2. That to Him alone belong the keys of the kingdom (Rev. 3:7).

3. That in His hand are all the blessings of the kingdom (2Pe. 1:3).

Act. 8:9-13. The Awakening in Samaria.

I. The obstacles which required to be overcome.The natural indifference of the human heart to religion. This formed the deepest and least movable barrier.

2. The character of the people. Half-heathen, ignorant, diseased, demonised, the population was hardly likely to be taken up with the interests of the soul:

3. The presence in the city of Simon the sorcerer, who in a manner had pre-engaged their attention and even captivated their hearts, from the least of them to the greatest.

II. The means which led to its arising.

1. The miracles and signs which Philip did, which convinced the people that a greater power than that of Simon had arrived upon the field.

2. The preaching of the gospel of the kingdom and of Jesus Christ. While these were the means, the Holy Spirit was the agent.

III. The characteristics which attended it.

1. Great excitement. This was inevitable.

2. Widespread conviction. The whole town seemed to be turned.

3. Numerous baptisms. The magician himself owned the power of the truth, and was baptised.

4. Universal joy. The whole city was in raptures of delight.

The Kingdom of Darkness and the Kingdom of Light in Conflict.

I. The two champions.

1. Of the kingdom of darkness, Simon, the sorcerer, an old and experienced warrior from the army of Satan (Act. 8:11).

2. Of the kingdom of light, Philip, the Christian deacon, a new and untried soldier from the ranks of the faithful (Act. 6:5).

II. The selected battle-field.

1. Locally, the city of Samaria.
2. Spiritually, the souls of its inhabitants. As the kingdom of light, so the kingdom of darkness is within a man.

III. The trusted weapons.

1. Those of Simon, sorcery, witchcraft, magic, legerdemain, sleight-of-hand, and generally the arts of the conjurer and wizard.

2. Those of Philip, the gospel or the good tidings concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ.

IV. The varying methods.

1. Simon relied on the power of delusion, or his ability to take advantage of human ignorance and credulity.

2. Philip reposed his confidence alone in enlightenment and conviction by the pure force of truth addressed to heart and conscience.

V. The decisive result.

1. Simon succeeded for a time in deceiving the people.
2. Philip in the end won them for Christ, and even carried captive (to appearance at least) Simon himself.

Act. 8:9; Act. 8:13; Act. 8:23. Simon Magus.

I. A successful sorcerer.

II. An insincere professor.

III. A baptised hypocrite.

IV. A detected deceiver.

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

(9) But there was a certain man, called Simon.The man who is thus brought before us in a brief episode, occupies a prominent place in the history and the legends of the Apostolic Church. For the present it will be convenient to deal only with the materials which St. Luke gives us, reserving a fuller account for the close of the narrative. Nothing is told us here as to his earlier history, prior to his arrival in Samaria. The name indicates Jewish or Samaritan origin. He appears as the type of a class but too common at the time, that of Jews trading on the mysterious prestige of their race and the credulity of the heathen, claiming supernatural power exercised through charms and incantations. Such afterwards was Elymas at Cyprus (Act. 13:6); such were the vagabond Jews exorcists at Ephesus (Act. 19:13); such was a namesake, Simon of Cyprus (unless, indeed, we have a re-appearance of the same man), who also claimed to be a magician, and who pandered to the vices of Felix, the Procurator of Juda, by persuading Drusilla (Jos. Ant. xx. 7, 2, see Note on Act. 24:24) to leave her first husband and to marry him. The life of such a man, like that of the Cagliostro fraternity in all ages, was a series of strange adventures, and startling as the statements as to his previous life may seem (see Note on Act. 8:24), they are not in themselves incredible. Apollonius of Tyana is, perhaps, the supreme representative of the charlatanism of the period.

Used sorcery.Literally, was practising magic. On the history of the Greek word magos and our magic, as derived from it, see Note on Mat. 2:1. Our sorcerer comes, through the French sorcier, from the Latin sortitor, a caster of lots (sortes) for the purposes of divination. Later legends enter fully into the various forms of sorcery of which Simon made use. (See below.)

Bewitched the people of Samaria.Literally, threw them into the state of trance or ecstasy; set them beside themselves, or out of their wits. The structure of the sentence shows that the city is not identical with Samaria, and that the latter name is used, as elsewhere, for the region.

Giving out that himself was some great one.The next verse defines the nature of the claim more clearly. The cry of the people that he was the great power of God, was, we may well believe, the echo of his own boast. He claimed to be, in some undefined way, an Incarnation of Divine Power. The very name had appeared in our Lords teaching when He spoke of Himself as sitting on the right hand of the Power of God, as an equivalent for the Father (Luk. 22:69).

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

‘But there was a certain man, Simon by name, who before that time in the city used sorcery, and amazed the people of Samaria, giving out that he himself was some great one, to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, “This man is that power of God which is called Great.” And they gave heed to him, because that of long time he had amazed them with his sorceries.’

Living among them was a man named Simon who had wooed them with sorcery, and had claimed to be a god-like figure. His powers were such that he had mesmerised the people into following him and calling him ‘the Great One, the Power of God’. In Judaism God was sometimes called ‘the Great One’. But he had clearly been unable to do anything like Philip did. Note that it is repeated twice that he ‘amazed’ the people and that they ‘gave heed’ to him. His grip was strong. But it was not sufficient to prevent them from turning to the Messiah Whom Philip proclaimed. For here they recognised was a greater power.

‘That power of God which is called Great.’ The description may suggest that Luke is quoting his source without fully comprehending what the religious significance of the title was.

Later church history would speak a great deal about a Simon Magus who was a great heretic and was supposed to have founded a Gnostic sect, but there is no certainty that it was this Simon. Simon Magus’ name first occurs in the writings of Justin Martyr, who was himself a Samaritan. But Justin does not make any identification with Acts. His name then occurs in Irenaeus, Hippolytus, the Acts of Peter with Simon, and other fictional works. He may well have been a totally different Simon whose life history became intermingled with this ones, for the Simon here in Acts does seem to be portrayed as becoming a genuine, if somewhat mixed up, believer.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

The conversion of Simon:

v. 9. But there was a certain man, called Simon, which before time in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that he himself was some great one;

v. 10. to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God.

v. 11. And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries.

v. 12. But when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.

v. 13. Then Simon himself believed also; and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip, and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs which were done.

Luke here adds a bit of local history which makes the victory of the Gospel stand out all the more strongly. A certain man there had been before these events had transpired in Samaria, whose name was Simon, and who had practiced magical arts and had had the people of the city and of the region impressed to the point of stupefaction with his tricks and diabolical jugglery. He advertised himself, with the humility characteristic of the people of his type, as being something great, as possessing enchantments and powers beyond natural ability. He practiced the charms and incantations so extensively employed in the Orient by both quacks and true sorcerers, that are able to perform feats that have the appearance of miracles, by the aid of the devil. So deeply impressed were the people that they regarded Simon as a manifestation of the divine power in human form. They therefore called him “Power of God which is called Great,” one that was very prominently great and divine, possessing powers which are peculiar to God. All this the Samaritans had done, because for a long time Simon had bewitched them with his magical tricks. They had put their own construction upon his acts, and they had believed his words. All this was changed with the coming of Philip. For when he preached the Gospel concerning the kingdom of God and of the name of Jesus Christ, when he brought to these benighted people the one message which could give them peace of mind and the blessed assurance of salvation, the Samaritans believed, faith in the Savior was wrought in their hearts, and they sought and received Baptism, the Sacrament which seals to both men and women the forgiveness of sins gained by Christ. Note: All magical tricks, even such as are performed with the aid of the devil, serve no beneficial purpose, being made only to excite idle curiosity. The miracles, on the other hand, both those that are narrated in Scriptures, and those which the Lord performs to this day, are in every case beneficent and worthy of the divine power. When Simon lost his former following so abruptly and thoroughly, he went to see and hear Philip, and was himself brought to faith. With the rest of the people, also, he was baptized and the promise of God thus sealed to him. There is no reason, from the account of Luke, to doubt the reality of Simon’s conversion at this time. It was a very striking proof of the superior power and of the divinity of the Gospel concerning Jesus the Messiah. And Simon, he that had caused astonishment in others, was here himself almost overwhelmed with stupefaction when he became an interested spectator of the signs and of the great wonders which were performed before his eyes. Note: The devil may often, by God’s permission, succeed in seducing men by means of his false miracles and tricks of jugglery, bat whenever the power of God looms up by way of contrast, he and all his servants are brought to shame before the Mightier One.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

Act 8:9. Used sorcery, &c. Had practised magical arts, and astonished the people. Heylin and Doddridge. Some think the word to be entirely of the same signification with the word , and intended to inform us, that this Simon was one of the sect of the Magi. He might possibly profess himself of this sect; but the word imports much more, and amounts to the same with “one who used enchantments,” pretending at least, in consequence of them, to exert some supernatural powers: whereas the word , at least about Christ’s time, signified much the same with our English word sage, and denoted a proficient in learning, and especially in astronomy and other branches of natural philosophy, to which the Persian magi addicted themselves, and so gave name to many who were far from holding the peculiarities of that sect. Irenaeus informs us, that Simon boasted he had appeared to the Samaritans as the Father, to the Jews as the Son, and to the Gentiles as the Holy Spirit; and Justin Martyr informs us, that he asserted, that all the names of God were to be ascribed to him, and that he was God, above all principality, power, and virtue. But if ever he made these pretences, it was probably after this time; for before it he seems to have been entirely a stranger to the first elements of the Christian doctrine, to which these blasphemies refer. Dr. Heylin renders the last clause of this verse, pretending that he was some extraordinary person.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Act 8:9 ] is not identical (in opposition to Heumann, Krebs, Rosenmller, Kuinoel, Neander, de Wette, Hilgenfeld, see also Gieseler’s Kirchengesch . I. sec. 18. 8, and others) with the Simon of Cyprus in Joseph. Antt. xx. 7. 2, [220] whom the Procurator Felix, at a later period, employed to estrange Drusilla, the wife of Azizus king of Emesa in Syria, from her husband. For (1) Justin, Apol. I. 26 (comp. Clem. Hom. i. 15, ii. 22), expressly informs us that Simon was from the village Gitthon in Samaria, and Justin himself was a Samairitan, so that we can the less suppose, in his case, a confusion with the name of the Cyprian town (Thuc. i. 112. 1). (2) The identity of name cannot, on account of its great prevalence, prove anything, and as little can the assertion that the Samaritans would hardly have deified one of their own countrymen (Act 8:10 ). The latter is even more capable of explanation from the national pride, than it would be with respect to a Cyprian.

] he was formerly (even before the appearance of Philip) in the city. The following . . . then adds how he was occupied there; comp. Luk 23:12 .

] practising magical arts , only here in the N. T.; but see Eur. Iph. T. 1337; Meleag. 12; Clearch. in Athen. vi. p. 256 E; Jacobs, ad Anthol. VI. p. 29. The magical exercises of the wizards, who at that time very frequently wandered about in the East, extended chiefly to an ostentatious application of their attainments in physical knowledge to juggling conjurings of the dead and demons, to influencing the gods, to sorceries, cures of the sick, soothsayings from the stars, and the like, in which the ideas and formulae of the Oriental-Greek theosophy were turned to display. See Neander, Gesch. d. Pflanz. u. Leit. d. christl. K. I. p. 99 f.; Mller in Herzog’s Encykl. VIII. p. 675 ff.

] We are not, accordingly, to put any more definite claim into the mouth of Simon; the text relates only generally his boasting self-exaltation , which may have expressed itself very differently according to circumstances, but always amounted to this, that he himself was a certain extraordinary person . Perhaps Simon designedly avoided a more definite self-designation, in order to leave to the praises of the people all the higher scope in the designating of that (Act 8:10 ) which he himself wished to pass for.

] He thus acted quite differently from Philip, who preached Christ , Act 8:5 . Comp. Rev 2:20 .

[220] Neander, p. 107 f., has entirely misunderstood the words of Josephus. See Zeller, p. 164 f.

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

But there was a certain man, called Simon, which beforetime in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one: (10) To whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God. (11) And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries. (12) But when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. (13) Then Simon himself believed also: and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip, and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs which were done. (14) Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John: (15) Who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost: (16) (For as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.) (17) Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost. (18) And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, (19) Saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost. (20) But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money. (21) Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God. (22) Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee. (23) For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity. (24) Then answered Simon, and said, Pray ye to the Lord for me, that none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me. (25) And they, when they had testified and preached the word of the Lord, returned to Jerusalem, and preached the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans.

I pray the Reader not to overlook, how the Church of God, in all ages, was broken in upon, by ungodly men. Here is a Sorcerer, and like another Balaam, one that used enchantment, rising up among the people, and professing great things. And this man carries matters with so good a face, that at the preaching of Philip, he puts on the appearance of being converted; and is said to have believed, that is, in head knowledge, and no further, he was convinced of the truth as it is in Jesus, And so plausible, even to Philip himself, (who was commissioned to work miracles, but not to read hearts,) appeared his conversion; that he was baptized, as well as others. But when Peter, and John came down to Samaria; and the same miraculous gifts of the Holy Ghost was poured out upon those whom the Lord had secretly inclined their hearts to the faith that is in Christ Jesus, as were given at Pentecost; then the detection of the hypocrisy of this awful character took place. For, as soon as he saw, through laying on of the hands of the Apostles, that the Holy Ghost was given; he took for granted, that this power, as he conceived the Apostles possessed in themselves, would be more profitable if he could obtain it for gain, than his sham tricks had been, which he had before practiced; and therefore he offered the Apostles money, that he might exercise the same privilege. Reader! pause and contemplate the extreme awfulness of such a character. To what a length men may run, and impose upon others, yea, and through the deceitfulness of sin, impose not unfrequently upon themselves also? How many of the character of Simon Magus, have been, and now are, in the midst of professing Churches, who can calculate? It is a solemn consideration; and enough to excite (as no doubt the Lord the Spirit designed it should) jealousy in every congregation! Neither would any truly faithful souls desire but to be jealous, with a godly jealousy over themselves and others. Gold, never shrinks from the trial of the hottest fire. It is only tinsel, which cannot bear the furnace.

Ministers of Christ ought never to be discouraged, when at any time, unprincipled characters, like Simon Magus, creep in among the faithful. Christ himself had a Judas in his twelve. And Philip here baptized an infidel. In all ages of the Church, it hath been so; yea, it is profitable to the Lord’s people, that it should be so. Such detections of hypocrites, when they take place, make the faithful truly jealous over themselves. And seeing that men, even the greatest men, like Philip, cannot discover hearts, the humble believer is hereby led to look to the Lord. And his language is: Search me, 0 God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting, Psa 139:23-24 .

Reader! are you truly in earnest to know the ground upon which you stand? Though men cannot judge for you, the Lord’s grace will enable you to judge for yourself. Look inward for divine teaching; and judge not by things outward, how promising soever they may appear. The witness of God the Holy Ghost, in the heart and conscience, by his regenerating grace is, in the place of a thousand arguments void of it. A man may learn, as Simon Magus did, by the preaching of Christ, who Christ is; and in head knowledge soar very high. But a soul-renewing apprehension of Christ can only be learnt from God the Holy Ghost. And when any one of those precious souls, whom the Father hath given to the Son, hath been awakened from the death of sin, by the regenerating power of the Holy Ghost: when from feeling, and knowing, by that Almighty Teacher, the plague of his own heart, he hath passed under the rod of the Covenant; the sentence of death in himself, and the sentence of condemnation under God’s holy law, which he is conscious he hath broken; when these precious effects are inwrought in the soul, by the power of the Holy Ghost: there can be no deception here. And when he that thus convinceth of sin, hath convinced also of Christ’s righteousness; when Jesus in his person, grace, and glory, is set up in the soul; and the heart is secretly and sweetly led to look to him, and to rely upon him for salvation: no soul deceptions can take place here, for such an apprehension of Christ, brings with it a sweet communion with Christ; and the believer is made to abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost, Rom 15:13 .

I must not take leave of the awful character of Simon Magus, whose history hath given occasion to the observations I have offered upon it, without first remarking to the Reader, what Peter said to this man, after he had told him, that he had no part, nor lot, in this matter; that is, no part nor lot in Christ, neither in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Apostle bid him repent of this his wickedness; meaning his awful offer of money, to purchase the gifts of the Holy Ghost: concluding, (as it should seem,) that, added to the natural state of original and actual sin in the Adam-nature of universal apostasy, this sin of his was little short of the unpardonable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. Let the Reader pause over this view of the subject. And then let him ask, what tremendous judgment may be supposed to follow in the numberless cases of modern times, where the sale of ministerial appointments (and from this man’s history called Simony,) have been carried on for money!

One word more on this awful instance of hypocrisy, in the case of Simon Magus. When Peter bid him repent of this sin, the Apostle could not mean, that he had power to change his own heart; or that he could practice a Christian grace, which alone comes from God’s gift, and Christ is exalted to bestow. Neither could he mean, that one, whom he had before said had neither part nor lot in this matter of Christ, would even receive repentance unto life. But the repentance Peter spake of was the repentance of this particular sin; for he puts a perhaps upon it: that this aggravated transgression might not bring a further load of guilt upon his head. And what Simon Magus in the answer he gave to Peter said, is to the same effect. He desired, as Pharaoh desired Moses, that he would pray for him. But, like Pharaoh, the heart remained hardened. He dreaded the punishment likely to follow, and would have avoided it. But we hear no cry of soul in either, for a change of heart, Exo 10:17 .

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Chapter 21

Prayer

Almighty God, come to our waiting hearts and give us the light and the comfort which are alone in thy gift. We come in the name of Jesus Christ. If we forget it, may our right hand forget its cunning, and our tongue cleave to the roof of our mouth. It is the Name above every name. It is “the Name to sinners dear.” Write it upon our heart and continually draw towards it all the passion of our love. Save us for Christ’s sake. Draw us away from all bondage into the infinite liberty of thy dear Son. With him thou wilt also freely give us all things. Thou delightest to give. Thou dost live to give. Every good gift and every perfect gift cometh down from heaven. We have nothing that we have not received, and upon everything that is in our lives is written thine own name. Continue to give unto us according to the need of every day. Refresh us with the dew of the morning. Find honey for us in the flowers that open in the noonday sun. At eventide do thou spread our table, and make our bed that we may rest. We would give ourselves to thee, thou God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. When we are wise we are foolish. When we are strong we are weak. When we would seek our life we lose it. Lord, help us to understand these things, and to throw ourselves with completest faith upon the Infinite Arm of thy Providence, and the Infinite heart of thy love. Few and evil, but a handful at the most, are the days of our pilgrimage. May we know to what goal we are moving, and with steadfast eye and continual progress, ever leaning upon the strong for strength, may we move onward to our destiny in thy providence. Thou dost rebuke us with many humiliations. Out of our voice thou dost take the boastful tone. Thou dost smite us for our healing; and that we may be solidly enriched thou dost first make us very poor. When we are weak then truly we are divinely strong. Feed us with the bread of life, which is Jesus Christ the Son of God. We would eat his flesh, we would drink his blood, that we might have life abiding in us. Show us the mystery of eating and drinking the flesh and blood of thy dear Son. Help us to distrust ourselves. Enable us to give the lie to our own senses, and to order them behind when they would attempt to penetrate the mystery of God. Thou art constantly showing us that we know nothing as it really is until our eyes are opened, and we do not hear the wondrous, the subtle, and ineffable music until thou dost anoint and inspire our ears. Sometimes we are ashamed of our wisdom. It is not what it looks. It is but a furbished lie. Our reckoning is one long line of mistakes, and so busy are we in putting the figures together, and looking as if we could handle them, that the humiliation thou dost inflict upon us becomes intolerable. Lord, teach us how to pray. Lord, increase our faith. Lord, take us from the alphabet of the senses into the deep reading of the spirit. Lord, spare not thy light, thy light in Christ, but let it drive every shadow away for ever. Bless the hearts that mourn with a little release from their distress. Dry the tears, lest they blind the eyes that are looking for thee. Put thine arms around all the little children, that in thine arms they may find perpetual security. Number our hairs when they are grey and white, that in old age men may know how to find in Christ the beginning of youth. As for those who are in prosperity, and who have no pain in head, or heart, or limb, on whose whole road the broad sunshine lies day by day men who have pulled down the altar and hidden thy Book away the Lord send a serpent to bite them and a great affliction, not for their destruction, but for their conversion. Amen.

Simon the Sorcerer

Act 8:9-13

LOOK first of all at the condition in which Philip found the city or the region of Samaria. You find there the condition of the whole world represented in one pregnant sentence. Samaria was (1) diseased, (2) possessed, and (3) deluded. These are the conditions in which Christianity has always to fight its great battle. Christianity never finds any town prepared to cooperate with it. All the conquests of Christianity imply a long siege, stubborn hostility, inveterate prejudice, and the victory of right over wrong. We are none of us by nature prepared to give the Christian teacher a candid hearing. We “hate the fellow, for he never prophesies good of us.” If he could prophesy good of us he would have nothing to tell our soul that could do it vital and lasting good. The first thing a Christian teacher has to do is to tear us, morally, to pieces! There is nothing in his favour. The literary lecturer pays homage to his audience, but the preacher rebukes it, humbles it, pours upon it holy despite and contempt. The early preachers did not trim, and balance, and smooth things. They spoke thunderstorms, and the very lifting of their hand was a battle half won. It was because they did fundamental work that they made progress so slow, but so sure. The world is no better today than Samaria was when Philip went down. And these three words, whole categories in themselves, include the moral condition of the race. Diseased, there is not a man in this house who is thoroughly and completely well, nor in any house, nor in all the world. If he suppose himself to be so, he is so only for the moment; he was ill yesterday, or will be to-morrow, and presently the oldest oak will be lightning struck and laid flat down on the cold earth. The world is a great lazar-house. The world is dying. You stand up in the mere mockery of strength; it is when we lie down that we assume the proper and final attitude of the body. How ill we are, what aches and pains! What sharp shootings, what burnings in the head, what throbbings in the heart!

The world is not only diseased, it is possessed. Possessed with demons, possessed with unclean spirits, possessed with false ideas. Why make a marvel or a mystery about demoniacal possession, when we are all so possessed? Why push this idea back some twenty centuries or more, as if it were an ancient anecdote? We are all insane! We are all devil-ridden. We had better give the right names to our mental conditions, lest we be attaching the wrong label and mistaking ourselves utterly. Out of Christ, out of the Cross, self-centred, self-poised, self-seeking, we are mad! Of course we are as usual the victims of the vulgarer interpretation of words. We do not account persons mad who are not shut up in confinement. Until we get a clearer conception of that word we shall be reading in the dark, and the Bible will be to us but a rock of stumbling and offence. Diseased, possessed these are the terms we must understand in their spiritual meaning. To these terms we must add a third, for Samaria was not only diseased and possessed, Samaria was also deluded. She was bewitched. The sorcerer had flung his charms upon her mind, and she was led as the sorcerer’s will suggested or desired. Understand that somebody has to lead the world. In Republicanism there is a Sovereignty. In a mob there is a captaincy; somebody must lead the world. And the question is who, Christ or Barabbas? There is only one question worth discussing so far as the future is concerned, and that is who is to rule, from whom is the future to receive its law and inspiration and its best rewards? To-day you find men making churches for the future. You might as well make clothes for the future: for ages unborn! There are those who are anxious to know which will be the Church of the future. Personally I am not interested in the inquiry. It may be elaborately answered. The reply may be as magnificent as a cipher would be if it were the size of the firmanent. Personally I do not care. My question is, who is to be the man of the future, the life, the Sovereign, the King of the future? This Man, Christ, or Barabbas? As Christians we have no difficulty about the result. We believe that Jesus of Nazareth, marred more than any man, shall come up out of his weakness and humiliation, and sit upon the throne of glory. We do not sing only, or say, we believe

If this were a sentiment only we might despise it. It is a faith which lifts up the whole life along with it to a noble level, and charges it with the function of a larger beneficence. It is not as if we could depose Christ, and then all be upon a level. There remains the historic certainty that some one man must lead. Who shall that one man be? Simon or Christ? Superstition or faith? Wrong or right?

As we are all diseased and all possessed, so we are all deluded. And who can encounter a delusion? None but God the Holy Ghost. There are no fingers dainty enough to take hold of a delusion and pull it out of the nest of the mind. This kind goeth forth only by the ministry of the Holy Ghost. A delusion belongs to the same class as a prejudice, and prejudice has no shape, no form, no hiding-place, that we can penetrate. It can only be dislodged by that which takes up all room, and yet leaves all space at liberty Light. Wondrous light! Filling all things and burdening none! Occupying all space, yet not encroaching on the little sphere of the meanest insect!

It is marvellous what delusions the mind can acquire, and most truly humbling is it to hear the deluded man’s tale about his personal suffering what he sees, what he hears, what he suspects, what he thinks he knows. That man is yourself, is myself, in one phase and aspect of our possible experience. Do not stand back from him as if you had nothing to do with his humanity. When he withers, you also wither. We are “members one of another.” From the weak we may learn our weakness; from the strong, the imperial, we may learn how mighty we too may become. Again, therefore, would I say, we are “members one of another.”

Superstition is not to be laughed at. I would rather laugh at the merely arithmetical man who never had a dream in his life. Were I disposed to mock, I would choose him as the butt of my bitter taunt. Even you who supposedly have the clear head and practical mind, without a single whim or fancy disturbing the equal balance of your intellectual monotony, what Gospel there can be for you it hath not entered into my mind to conceive. Show me a man who has dreams, fancies, visions of the night, and who is following invisible leaders, and out of him there may come a very apostle of the everlasting kingdom of Jesus Christ. He has the making of a man in him. And yet I would not despise the other man, simply because we do occasionally require to eke out the structure with stones that have only a burden to carry and with pillars that are covered by the painter’s trick. Christianity has to encounter all the false faiths of the world. There is a strong man already in possession of the citadel, and he will not easily give way. It is not an easy thing for the missionary to persuade the most barbarous of his hearers to throw away the piece of wood or stone, which the barbarian hugs as his god. It is a long way from the physical eye to the spiritual light! The barbarian likes a god that he can finger well. He knows then that he has a god. To be told that God is Unseen and Invisible, “God is a Spirit,” “No man hath seen God at any time,” “No man can see God and live,” is a Gospel that requires time to make its way in the world the world that wants to make the globe a factory and human life a toil! Christianity must continually startle its students by showing them how very little there is in its Book that is literal. You put the water into the firkin and it comes out wine! You peruse the letter, and it turns into a spirit! There is the difficulty to men who live an intellectually jaunty life, who touch things with their fingers, count things up to ten, then add, multiply, and subtract, and divide at pleasure, and who suppose that they have in this way settled the whole case. I can ask the strongest-sighted man in the world to look at a piece of glass and tell me if there is anything upon it, And his necessary answer must be, if he limit his judgment by his sight, that the glass is absolutely vacant. I can hand to him a magnifier, and say, “Look at the glass now, for whatever is upon it that magnifier will increase one hundred fold.” He takes the glass, he looks at the object, and he says, “I still adhere to my judgment and declare that this piece of glass is absolutely void, there is literally nothing upon it.” I like his emphasis, because presently it will be turned into contrition. I encourage him to be very emphatic, and when he has reached the very limit of his emphasis, and almost taken his stand upon his dignity, I bring the proper microscopic power to bear upon the glass which he declared to be vacant and void, then imagine his look! He sees that within the thousandth part of an inch there is written the sublimest prayer ever offered to God! What was wanting? A medium. What was absent? The necessary help to the eye! Yet there are those amongst us who say, “Seeing is believing.” Truly say I, but what is seeing? Where does it begin, where does it end? And what do we know now about sight, or light, or anything as it really is? This being so in the lower realms of thinking and inquiry, I am enabled to move upward to the higher regions, and to believe that “God is a Spirit.”

It is very instructive to watch Philip’s course in Samaria, because first of all he took no notice of Simon. There are some persons who think we ought to send missionaries to argue down the infidels. Do not let us belong to that extremely foolish class of persons. There is nothing to be argued down. Argument is the weakest of all weapons. If occasion should naturally arise for the answering of some sophistical argument, avail yourselves of it, but do not imagine that Christianity has to go down to Samaria to fight a pitched battle, face to face with Simon Magus. What then did Philip do? Philip preached CHRIST. Simon had been preaching himself. Philip never mentioned himself, all the while he talked only about Christ. Thus Philip did not argue down Simon, he superseded him. The daylight does not argue with the artificial light. The sun does not say, “Let us talk this matter over, thou little, beautiful, artificial jet. Let us be candid with one another, and polite to one another, and let us treat one another as gentlemen talking on equal terms. Let us thus see which of us ought to rule the earth.” The sun does nothing but SHINE! What then! Men then sneakingly put the gas out! “Let YOUR light so shine before men that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” Lift is the unanswerable logic. Holiness is the invincible argument. Charity, love, beneficence, chivalry, self-sacrifice, these form the shining host that will chase all competitors away!

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

9 But there was a certain man, called Simon, which beforetime in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one:

Ver. 9. Which beforetime, &c. ] Or, which was master of the magicians, . Sed quae traduntur de modo disceptationis Petri cum Simone Mago potius quam esse videntur.

Bewitched the people ] Gr. . Carried them out of themselves, as in an ecstasy, so that they were more his than their own.

Some great thing ] Such a blab the devil had blown up there, as a small wind may blow up a bubble.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

9. ] Neander, in the course of some excellent remarks on this whole history (see further on Act 8:14 ), identifies, and I believe with reason, this Simon with one mentioned as living from ten to twenty years after this by Josephus, Antt. xx. 7. 2, , (Drusilla) , , , , , , . The only difficulty seems to be, that Simon is stated by Justin Martyr, himself a Samaritan, to have been , . But it has struck me that either Justin, or perhaps more probably Josephus, may have confounded Ghittim with Chittim, i.e. Citium in Cyprus. This conjecture I also find mentioned in the Dict. of Biography and Mythology, sub voce. The account in Josephus is quite in character with what we here read of Simon: not inconsistent (Meyer) with Act 8:24 , which appears to have been uttered under terror occasioned by the solemn denunciation of Peter.

Justin goes on to relate that he was worshipped as a God at Rome in the time of Claudius Csar, on account of his magical powers, and had a statue on the island in the Tiber, inscribed ‘Simoni Deo Sancto.’ Singularly enough, in the year 1574, a stone was found in the Tiber (or standing on the island in the year 1662, according to the Dict. of Biogr. and Myth.), with the inscription SEMONI SANCO DEO FIDIO SACRVM, i.e. to the God Semo Sancus, the Sabine Hercules, which makes it probable that Justin may have been misled.

The history of Simon is full of legend and fable. The chief sources of it are the Recognitiones and Clementina of the pseudo-Clemens. He is there said to have studied at Alexandria, and to have been, with the heresiarch Dositheus, a disciple of John the Baptist. Of Dositheus he became first the disciple, and then the successor. Origen (in Matt. Comm. 33, vol. iii. p. 851) makes Dositheus also a Samaritan: so also contra Cels. i. 57, vol. i. p. 372, and Hom. xxv. in Luc. vol. iii. p. 962. His own especial followers (Simoniani) had dwindled so much in the time of Origen, that he says . , contra Cels. ubi supra; see also ib. vi. 11, p. 638, and , iv. 17, p. 176. In the Becognitiones and the Clementina are long reports of subsequent controversies between Simon Magus and Peter, of which the scene is laid at Csarea. According to Arnobius (adv. Gentes, ii. 12, p. 828 ed. Migne), the Constt. Apostol. (ii. 14, p. 620; vi. 9, p. 932 ed. Migne), and Cyril of Jerusalem, he met with his death at Rome, having, during an encounter with Peter, raised himself into the air by the aid of evil spirits, and being precipitated thence at the prayer of Peter and Paul. [I saw in the church of S. Francesca Romana in the forum, a stone with two dents in it and this inscription, “On this stone rested the knees of S. Peter when the dmons carried Simon Magus through the air.”] The fathers generally regard him as the founder of Gnosticism: this may be in some sense true: but, from the very little authentic information we possess, it is impossible to ascertain how far he was identified with their tenets. Origen (contra Cels. v. 62, p. 625) distinctly denies that his followers were Christians in any sense: , , .

] Not to be joined with (as in E. V. and Kuin.), which belongs to : exercising magic arts , such as then were very common in the East and found wide acceptance; impostors taking advantage of the very general expectation of a Deliverer at this time, to set themselves up by means of such trickeries as ‘some great ones.’ We have other examples in Elymas (ch. 13): Apollonius of Tyana; and somewhat later, Alexander of Abonoteichos: see these latter in Dict. of Biogr. and Myth.

] Probably not in such definite terms as his followers later are represented as putting into his mouth: ‘Ego sum sermo Dei ego paracletus, ego omnipotens, ego omnia Dei.’ Jerome on Mat 24:5 , vol. vii. p. 193.

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Act 8:9 . : very few of the most advanced critics now dismiss Simon as an unhistorical character, or deny that the account before us contains at least some historical data; see McGiffert’s note, Apostolic Age , p. 100. Hilgenfeld and Lipsius may be reckoned amongst those who once refused to admit that Simon Magus was an historical personage, but who afterwards retracted their opinion. But it still remains almost unaccountable that so many critics should have more or less endorsed, or developed, the theory first advocated by Baur that the Simon Magus of the Clementine Homilies is none other than the Apostle Paul. It is sufficient to refer for an exposition of the absurdity of this identification to Dr. Salmon “Clementine Literature” ( Dict. of Christ. Biog. , iii., pp. 575, 576; see also Ritschl’s note, Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche , p. 228 (second edition)). This ingenuity outdid itself in asking us to see in Simon’s request to buy the power of conferring the Holy Ghost a travesty of the rejection of Paul’s apostolic claims by the older Apostles, in spite of the gift of money which he had collected for the poor Saints in Jerusalem (Overbeck). No wonder that Spitta should describe such an explanation as “a perfect absurdity” ( Apostelgeschichte , p. 149). Before we can believe that the author of the Acts would make any use of the pseudo-Clementine literature in his account of Simon, we must account for the extraordinary fact that an author who so prominently represents his hero as triumphing over the powers of magic, Act 13:6-12 , Act 19:11-19 , should have recourse to a tradition in which this same hero is identified with a magician (see Spitta, u. s. , p. 151; Salmon, “The Simon of Modern Criticism,” Dict. of Christian Biog. , iv., p. 687; Zckler, Apostelgeschichte , p. 212, and Wendt’s note, p. 201). In Act 21:8 we read that St. Luke spent several days in the house of Philip the Evangelist, and if we bear in mind that this same Philip is so prominent in chap. 8, there is nothing impossible in the belief that St. Luke should have received his narrative from St. Philip’s lips, and included it in his history as an early and remarkable instance of the triumph of the Gospel we need not search for anymore occult reason on the part of the historian (see Salmon, u. s. , p. 688). Simon then is an historical personage, and it is not too much to say that to all the stories which have gathered round his name the narrative of Acts always stands in a relation of priority the two facts mentioned in Acts, that Simon was a magician, and that he came into personal antagonism with St. Peter, always recur elsewhere but Acts tells us nothing of the details of Simon’s heretical preaching, and it draws the veil entirely over his subsequent history. But “the hero of the romance of heresy” comes into prominence under the name of Simon in Justin Martyr, Apol. , i., 26, Irenus, i., 23 (who speaks of Simon the Samaritan, from whom all heresies had their being), and in the Clementine literature. But there is good reason for thinking that St. Irenus, whilst he gives us a fuller account, is still giving us an account dependent on Justin, and there is every reason to believe that the Clementine writers also followed the same authority; see further, Salmon, “Simon Magus,” u. s. , 4, p. 681 ff., and for a summary of the legends which gathered round the name of the Samaritan magician Plumptre’s note, in loco , may be consulted. To the vexed question as to the identification of the Simon of Justin with the Simon of the Acts Dr. Salmon returns a decided negative answer, u. s. , p. 683, and certainly the Simon described by Justin seems to note rather the inheritor and teacher of a Gnostic system already developed than to have been in his own person the father of Gnosticism. Simon, however, was no uncommon name, e.g. , Josephus, Ant. , xx., 7, 2, speaks of a Simon of Cyprus, whom there is no valid reason to identify with the Simon of the Acts (although famous critical authorities may be quoted in favour of such an identification). On the mistake made by Justin with reference to the statue on the Tiberine island with the words Semoni Sanco Deo Fidio inscribed ( cf. the account of the marble fragment, apparently the base of a statue, dug up in 1574, marked with a similar inscription, in Lanciani’s Pagan and Christian Rome ) in referring it to Simon Magus, Apol. , i, 26, 56, Tertullian, Apol. , c. xiii., and Irenus, i., 23, whilst in reality it referred to a Sabine god, Semo Sancus, the Sabine Hercules, see further, Salmon, u. s. , p. 682, Rendall, Acts , p. 220. (Van Manen, followed by Feine, claims to discover two representations of Simon in Acts one as an ordinary magician, Act 8:9 ; Act 8:11 , the other as a supposed incarnation of the deity, Act 8:10 so too Jngst, who refers the words from to to his Redactor; but on the other hand Hilgenfeld and Spitta see no contradiction, and regard the narrative as a complete whole.) : only here in N.T., not found in LXX (but cf. in Dan 1:20 ; Dan 2:2 ), though used in classical Greek. The word was used frequently by Herodotus of the priests and wise men in Persia who interpreted dreams, and hence the word came to denote any enchanter or wizard, and in a bad sense, a juggler, a quack like (see instances in Wetstein). Here ( cf. Act 13:6 ) it is used of the evil exercise of magic and sorcery by Simon, who practised the charms and incantations so extensively employed at the time in the East by quacks claiming supernatural powers (Baur, Paulus , i, p. 107; Neander, Geschichte der Pflan zung, cf. i., 84, 85 (fifth edit.); Wendt, Apostelgeschichte , p. 202; Blass, in loco; Deissmann, Bibelstudien , p. 19, and see below on Act 13:6 . , from ( ); so , W. H. from (hellenistic), see Blass, Grammatik , pp. 48, 49, transitive in present, future, first aorist active, cf. Luk 24:22 so , Act 8:11 , perfect active, hellenistic form, also transitive; see Blass, u. s. (also Winer-Schmiedel, p. 118, and Grimm-Thayer, sub v. ) (in 3Ma 1:25 also occurs). , intransitive, Act 8:13 , Blass, u. s. , p. 49 the revisers have consistently rendered the verb by the same English word in the three Act 8:9 ; Act 8:11 ; Act 8:13 , thus giving point and force to the narrative, see on Act 8:13 . . . ., cf. Act 5:36 Blass, Grammatik , p. 174, regards as an interpolation, and it is not found in the similar phrase in Act 5:36 (so too Winer-Schmiedel, p. 243), cf. Gal 2:6 ; Gal 6:3 , and the use of the Latin aliquis , Cicero, Att. , iii., 15, so too vii. 3, etc. It may be that Simon set himself up for a Messiah (see Ritschl’s note, p. 228, Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche , second edition), or a Prophet, Jos., Ant. , xviii., 4, 1, but Act 8:14 points to a definite title, and it is likely enough that the people would repeat what Simon had told them of himself. His later followers went further and made him say, “Ego sum sermo Dei, ego sum speciosus, ego paraclitus, ego omnipotens, ego omnia Dei” Jerome, Commentar. in Matt. , c. Act 20:24 (Neander, Geschichte der Pflan zung, cf. i., 85, note). : contrast Philip’s attitude; he preached Christ, not himself ( cf. Rev 2:20 ).

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Act 8:9-13

9Now there was a man named Simon, who formerly was practicing magic in the city and astonishing the people of Samaria, claiming to be someone great; 10and they all, from smallest to greatest, were giving attention to him, saying, “This man is what is called the Great Power of God.” 11And they were giving him attention because he had for a long time astonished them with his magic arts. 12But when they believed Philip preaching the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were being baptized, men and women alike. 13Even Simon himself believed; and after being baptized, he continued on with Philip, and as he observed signs and great miracles taking place, he was constantly amazed.

Act 8:9 “a man named Simon” Whether this man truly believed (cf. Act 8:13; Act 8:18) or was simply a charlatan seeking power is uncertain. I would like to give him the benefit of the doubt based on Act 8:24. It is amazing how much tradition the early church developed around this man, but all of it is speculative (cf. The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, vol. 5, pp. 442-444).

NASB, NRSV”magic”

NKJV, TEV”sorcery”

NJB”magic arts”

SPECIAL TOPIC: MAGIC

Act 8:10 “This man is what is called the Great Power of God” This was a title for the high god of the Greco-Roman Pantheon (i.e., Zeus). In Aramaic it would be “This is the power of the god who is called great.” This man had thoroughly tricked the locals. He may have even tricked himself (cf. Act 8:9; Act 8:13).

Act 8:12 “believed” See Special Topic: Believe, Faith, Trust at Act 3:16 and OT Believe at Act 6:5.

NASB”preaching the good news”

NKJV”preached the things”

NRSV”was proclaiming the good news”

TEV”message about the good news”

This is the Greek verb euangeliz, which is a compound of good (eu) and message (angeliz). We get the English words evangel, evangelize, and evangelism from this Greek term. Philip presented the story of Jesus to these Samaritans and they responded in saving faith.

“about the kingdom of God” See the Two Special Topics on this subject at Act 1:3.

“the name of Jesus Christ” See Special Topic at Act 2:21.

“they were being baptized” See Special Topic at Act 2:38.

“men and women alike” Contextually there may be two significances to this phrase.

1. Paul persecuted “men and women (cf. Act 8:3),” but the gospel also was saving “men and women”

2. In Judaism only men participated in the initial Jewish rite of circumcision, but now in the gospel, both genders participated in the initial rite of baptism.

Act 8:13 “Simon believed” Most evangelicals use this term “believed” (See Special Topic at Act 3:16) in a very definitive sense, but there are places in the NT (e.g., Joh 8:31) where it denotes something less than conversion (cf. Joh 8:59).

Initial faith is not the only criteria (cf. Mat 13:1-23; Mat 24:13). Continuance and obedience are also evidence of a true relationship with Christ.

SPECIAL TOPIC: PERSEVERANCE

“he continued on with Philip” This is a periphrastic imperfect. Notice the sequence.

1. he heard, Act 8:6-7; Act 8:12

2. he saw, Act 8:6-7; Act 8:13

3. he believed, Act 8:13

4. he was baptized, Act 8:13

5. he went with Philip, Act 8:13

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

certain. Greek. tis. App-123.

called. Literally by name

beforetime . . . used sorcery Literally before was (Greek. prouparcho Luk 23:12) practicing magic (Greek. mageuo, to act as a magos. Only here. Compare Act 13:6, Act 13:8. Mat 2:1, Mat 2:7, Mat 2:16).

same. Omit

and bewitched = bewitching Greek. existemi, to drive out of one’s senses. In middle voice, to be amazed. Compare Act 2:7, Act 2:12. Mar 3:21 2Co 5:13

people. Greek. ethnos, nation

giving out = saying

some = a certain tis. App-123

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

9. ] Neander, in the course of some excellent remarks on this whole history (see further on Act 8:14), identifies, and I believe with reason, this Simon with one mentioned as living from ten to twenty years after this by Josephus, Antt. xx. 7. 2, , (Drusilla) , , , , , , . The only difficulty seems to be, that Simon is stated by Justin Martyr, himself a Samaritan, to have been , . But it has struck me that either Justin, or perhaps more probably Josephus, may have confounded Ghittim with Chittim, i.e. Citium in Cyprus. This conjecture I also find mentioned in the Dict. of Biography and Mythology, sub voce. The account in Josephus is quite in character with what we here read of Simon: not inconsistent (Meyer) with Act 8:24, which appears to have been uttered under terror occasioned by the solemn denunciation of Peter.

Justin goes on to relate that he was worshipped as a God at Rome in the time of Claudius Csar, on account of his magical powers, and had a statue on the island in the Tiber, inscribed Simoni Deo Sancto. Singularly enough, in the year 1574, a stone was found in the Tiber (or standing on the island in the year 1662, according to the Dict. of Biogr. and Myth.), with the inscription SEMONI SANCO DEO FIDIO SACRVM, i.e. to the God Semo Sancus, the Sabine Hercules, which makes it probable that Justin may have been misled.

The history of Simon is full of legend and fable. The chief sources of it are the Recognitiones and Clementina of the pseudo-Clemens. He is there said to have studied at Alexandria, and to have been, with the heresiarch Dositheus, a disciple of John the Baptist. Of Dositheus he became first the disciple, and then the successor. Origen (in Matt. Comm. 33, vol. iii. p. 851) makes Dositheus also a Samaritan: so also contra Cels. i. 57, vol. i. p. 372, and Hom. xxv. in Luc. vol. iii. p. 962. His own especial followers (Simoniani) had dwindled so much in the time of Origen, that he says . , contra Cels. ubi supra; see also ib. vi. 11, p. 638, and , iv. 17, p. 176. In the Becognitiones and the Clementina are long reports of subsequent controversies between Simon Magus and Peter, of which the scene is laid at Csarea. According to Arnobius (adv. Gentes, ii. 12, p. 828 ed. Migne), the Constt. Apostol. (ii. 14, p. 620; vi. 9, p. 932 ed. Migne), and Cyril of Jerusalem, he met with his death at Rome, having, during an encounter with Peter, raised himself into the air by the aid of evil spirits, and being precipitated thence at the prayer of Peter and Paul. [I saw in the church of S. Francesca Romana in the forum, a stone with two dents in it and this inscription, On this stone rested the knees of S. Peter when the dmons carried Simon Magus through the air.] The fathers generally regard him as the founder of Gnosticism: this may be in some sense true: but, from the very little authentic information we possess, it is impossible to ascertain how far he was identified with their tenets. Origen (contra Cels. v. 62, p. 625) distinctly denies that his followers were Christians in any sense: , , .

] Not to be joined with (as in E. V. and Kuin.), which belongs to : exercising magic arts, such as then were very common in the East and found wide acceptance; impostors taking advantage of the very general expectation of a Deliverer at this time, to set themselves up by means of such trickeries as some great ones. We have other examples in Elymas (ch. 13): Apollonius of Tyana; and somewhat later, Alexander of Abonoteichos: see these latter in Dict. of Biogr. and Myth.

] Probably not in such definite terms as his followers later are represented as putting into his mouth: Ego sum sermo Dei ego paracletus, ego omnipotens, ego omnia Dei. Jerome on Mat 24:5, vol. vii. p. 193.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Act 8:9. , a man) Such an adversary also Paul found, ch Act 13:6 (Elymas).-, was before) Not always is he, who is prior in point of time, entitled to precedency also in claim of right: Act 8:11, ch. Act 13:6. When he was alone, he was able to find applause; but the coming of the light dispels the darkness. Great is the power of the kingdom of God: Act 8:7; Act 8:13; Exo 9:11.-, using magic or sorcery) There are therefore in reality magicians, and such a thing as magic: Exo 7:11; Exo 7:22; Exo 8:7.- , of Samaria) When the error of this nation has come to its height, the truth is at hand (arrives).

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Act 8:9-13

SIMON THE SORCERER

Act 8:9-13

9 But there was a certain man, Simon-Simon was a common name among the Jews; it is a contraction from Simeon. There are ten men mentioned in the New Testament by this name. This Simon is known as Simon Magus, or Simon the sorcerer. There were many sorcerers, or those who deceived the people by certain tricks and deceptions. Nothing further is known of this Simon except what is mentioned here. He had used sorcery for some time and had amazed the people of Samaria, and had pretended himself to be some great one. Simon was an impostor, and it is amazing how gullible people are in the presence of such deceivers. He practiced his magic arts and pretended that he could do wonderful things. Simon has become a famous character in the early history of the church in Samaria. His pretended miracles were not discovered by the people; they thought that he was what he claimed to be, some great one.

10 to whom they all gave heed,-It seems that he had been successful in practicing his magic art until he had deceived all the people in that country. They listened to him from the least to the greatest, and all praised him, thinking that the power of God which is called Great was exercised through him. They were led to regard him as having a most intimate connection with the Deity, and as having power to affect seriously the destiny of men.

11 And they gave heed to him,-Tradition has it that Simon went about accompanied by a woman named Helena who was also a power of God. He taught a great first principle, hidden but omnipresent; this principle manifested itself in two different ways -as an active and spiritual principle and as a passive and receptive principle. The first is the good, the latter the evil; the first is the great power of God manifesting itself from the recovery of the other or passive receptive principle. Simon himself was the incarnation of the active principle, which made for salvation; Helena was the incarnation of the passive reception principle. Her life of degradation was a type of the deterioration of the visible universe, and her recovery by Simon was the process of salvation by the great power of God made visible. This dualism, with its simple, almost childish, symbolism, its male and female principles, its opposition of good and evil, was the source out of which Simon constructed his system. Simon had so amazed the people by his pretended supernatural powers that they gave heed to him in whatsoever he did or claimed.

12 But when they believed Philip preaching-When Philip went among these deluded people and preached Jesus as the Messiah and the Savior of the world, and accompanied his preaching with the real signs or miracles, they believed him. Philips miracles were put in direct contrast with the pretended works of Simon; Philip cast out demons, cured the palsied, and healed the crippled so that the people could see what he had done. Many of them were thus healed and knew that there was no deception practiced by Philip. It is noted that when they believed, they were baptized, both men and women. On Pentecost after they believed Peters preaching, they asked what to do, and they were told that they should repent and be baptized unto the remission of your sins. (Act 2:38.) Hence, in every instance where people turned to the Lord, or believed the gospel, they were baptized.

13 And Simon also himself believed:-Simon heard Philip and saw what Philip did; he believed: and being baptized, he continued for some time with Philip. There was no difference between the faith of Simon and that of the other people in Samaria. Simon also himself believed: he believed the same thing that the others believed, and he was baptized as were the others. Jesus had said: He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. (Mar 16:16.) Simon believed and was baptized; hence, he had the remission of his sins, for Jesus had said that the one who believed and was baptized should be saved. He continued with Philip, and saw the signs and great miracles wrought by Philip. Continued is from the Greek proskartereo, and is used in Act 1:14 Act 2:42 Act 2:46, and means originally to persist obstinately in. For some time at least he continued with Philip, hearing his preaching and seeing the miracles that he wrought. He saw the wide contrast in what Philip was doing and what he had pretended to do. He was amazed or astonished at what Philip was able to do; he saw the reality of working miracles by the hand of Philip.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

used: Act 13:6, Act 16:16-18, Act 19:18-20, Exo 7:11, Exo 7:22, Exo 8:18, Exo 8:19, Exo 9:11, Lev 20:6, Deu 18:10-12, 2Ti 3:8, 2Ti 3:9, Rev 13:13, Rev 13:14, Rev 22:15

giving: Act 5:36, Joh 7:18, 2Th 2:4, 2Ti 3:2, 2Ti 3:5, 2Pe 2:18

Reciprocal: Exo 7:12 – but Aaron’s Exo 22:18 – General Num 22:6 – I wot 1Ch 10:13 – a familiar Pro 22:12 – he Mat 24:5 – in Luk 21:8 – for Act 8:19 – General Act 19:19 – used 2Co 4:5 – we Gal 3:1 – who Gal 5:20 – witchcraft 2Th 2:9 – is 1Ti 6:4 – He

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

9

Act 8:9. Used sorcery is from MAGEUO which Thayer defines, “To be a magician; to practice magical arts.” In past ages, God suffered Satan to exert supernatural power through the agency of men (Exo 7:11-12 Exo 7:22 Exo 8:18-19). Because of the real existence of such works, it was possible for men to impose on the credulity of the people and thus pass for such supernaturally-endowed performers even though they were frauds. Whether Simon was the former or the latter kind of actor we are not informed.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Act 8:9. A certain man, called Simon, which beforetime in the same city need sorcery. We have here a description of the first collision between the unreality and imposture in the outside world, and the earnestness and single-heartedness of the little community who loved the name of Jesus. The person called Simon, commonly known as Simon Magus, or the magician, was not an uncommon figure in the history of this period. Such a one we meet with again in Elymas at the court of the Roman governor, Sergius Paulus (Acts 13). Such a one was the famous impostor Apollonius of Tyana, who flourished in the same century. An advanced knowledge of natural philosophy, especially of chemistry, gave these clever unscrupulous characters a strange power and influence over mens minds, an influence they constantly used to further their own selfish ends. Simon seems to have been really impressed with the miracles performed by Philip, and at once perceived that these wonder-works were of a very different order from those which his superior knowledge of natural science enabled him to perform. He never seems to have comprehended the source whence proceeded Philips awful power. He attributed it simply to a deeper knowledge of the secrets of nature, and thought the key to the art was, of course, to be bought. His mistake and discomfiture are related in the following verses. Bitterly annoyed at the result of his collision with the followers of Jesus, it is probable that this unhappy man at once turned his great powers [for these undoubtedly he possessed in no mean degree] to oppose the growing influence of the little Church. His evil work was crowned with no small measure of success, for in the records of the early history of Christianity, among the many false teachers who sprang up, Simon Magus is invested with a mysterious importance, as the great Heresiarch, the open enemy of the apostles, inspired, it would seem, by the spirit of evil, to countermine the work of the Saviour, and to found a school of error in opposition to the Church of God. In the treatise, Against Heresies, a work now generally ascribed to Hippolytus, bishop of Portus, near Rome, about A.D. 218-235, we find a general outline of the principles of Simon Magus and his school. Some account also is given in the same treatise of the Great Announcement ( ), a writing compiled from the oral teaching of Simon, by one of his immediate followers: in this compilation the revelation with which he declared he was entrusted is set forth, and the work and Person of Christ are disparaged and set aside. See Westcott, On the Canon, chap, 4, and Ewald, Acten Geschichte, pp. 120, 122. Simon is by many regarded as the father of Gnosticism.

Giving out that himself was some great one. According to Justin Martyr, Simon pretended that he was God, above all principality and power. Jerome relates that he said, I am the Son of God, the Paraclete, the Almighty, etc. Such bold assertions as these related by Justin Martyr and Jerome were no doubt made subsequently to his collision with Peter and Philip. Exasperated by his repulse, and the exposure he had suffered at the hands of these believers in Christ, envious too of their powers and also of the consideration which they enjoyed with so many of the people, he endeavoured, by assuming the titles of the Master of Peter and Philip, to win something of the power they possessed, and which he coveted.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

An account is here given of one of Philip’s auditors at Samaria, Simon Magus by name, or Simon the sorcerer, a vile man, the blackest Ethiopian that ever baptismal water wet or washed. Notorious for sorcery, for hypocrisy, for final apostacy, and avowed impiety. Ecclesiastical history informs us of the heresies he broached, of the divine honours he assumed, of the statues and images built to him and his strumpet Helen, which lewdly accompanied with him; of an altar erected to him with this blasphemous inscription, Simoni Deo sancto, “To Simonthe holy God:” and of his tragical end, by breaking his neck, when attempting to fly up to heaven, because the people would no longer be cheated with his impostures here below.

From this example, note, 1. That into the most eminent and populous cities do oft-times enter the greatest and vilest impostors, the most atheistical and diabolical sorcerers: There they lurk and lodge, there they seek to set up and play their prizes.

Note, 2. That the vilest impostors, and the worst seducers have yet many, very many followers: The silly multitude is soon deluded: To him they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest.

Note, 3. That such vile deceivers have the confidence to brag, and the deluded multitude have the weakness to believe, that they are very extraordinary persons, and can do extraordinary things. Simon gave it out himself, that he was some great one; and the people cry him up as the great power of God.

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

Act 8:9-11. But there was, &c. At the time when the gospel was thus brought to them by Philip, a man was there, called Simon, which before- time in the same city used sorcery Greek, had been , using magic arts. Some think the expression is entirely of the same signification with the word , and is intended to tell us, that this Simon was one of the sect of the magi; (see on Mat 2:1;) and it is possible he might profess himself of that sect: but certainly the expression here used imports much more, and amounts to the same with one who used enchantments, pretending, in consequence of them, to exert some supernatural powers; whereas the word magus, at least about Christs time, seems to have signified much the same with our English word sage, and to have denoted a proficient in learning, and especially in astronomy, and other branches of natural philosophy, to which the Persian magi addicted themselves, and so gave name to many who were far from holding the peculiarities of that sect. Yet as many natural philosophers pretended also to be magicians in the common sense of the word among us, and might make their natural knowledge subservient to that pretence when it was mere imposture, it is not improbable that they generally called themselves magi; and so the verb might come to signify the making use of unlawful arts, (as it plainly does here,) while the noun, from whence it was derived, might still retain a more extensive and innocent signification. See Doddridge. And bewitched the people , astonishing the nation; of Samaria By his magic arts he showed many signs and lying wonders, which seemed to be miracles, but really were not so; like those of the magicians of Egypt, and those of the man of sin, mentioned 2Th 2:9 : giving out, that himself was some great one A person possessed of supernatural powers; he wished the people to believe so, and to respect him accordingly. To whom they all gave heed Paid great regard, as he desired them to do; from the least to the greatest Both young and old, both poor and rich; saying, This man is the great power of God Greek, , , literally, the power of God, that great power. Thus ignorant, unthinking people mistake what is done by the power of Satan, as if it were done by the power of God; and so with the Gentile world, devils pass for deities, and in the antichristian kingdom, all the world wonders after the beast, to whom the dragon gives his power, and who opens his mouth in blasphemy against God, Rev 13:2-5. Their meaning probably was, that Simon was the long-expected Messiah, and even Omnipotence itself incarnate, otherwise, they supposed, he could not do such wonderful things. And to him they had regard Had the greater regard; because that of long time he had bewitched them Or rather, had astonished them, the word being the same with that used Act 8:9; with sorceries With the lying wonders which he wrought by his enchantments.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

See notes on verse 6

Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)

Act 8:9-13. Simon Magus.This man had been for some time at Samaria. This is the only account of him in NT; but in the early Fathers and in Christian legend he occupies much space, and he has been the occasion during the last century of voluminous controversy; see Baur, Church History, i. 9198, Schmiedel in EBi., Headlam in HDB. Justin Martyr, who was a native of Samaria, tells us that he was born at Gitta, three miles W. of Samaria, and that evil spirits acted in him and enabled him to perform magical works; also that his followers made great use of exorcisms, incantations, philtres, etc. More is known of him by later writers. In the Pseudo-Clementine writings he is surrounded by a rich growth of legend (ANF, vol. xvii.); he had contests with Peter in Palestine and later at Rome; he injured himself in an attempt to fly across the Tiber; and he appears as a caricature of Paul, using some of his expressions and imitating some of his acts. He was regarded by some of the Fathers as the source of Gnostic heresy; on the other hand his existence has been denied. We assume his historical reality, but some of the details about him in this passage are scarcely transparent to us. When Philip came, and preached about the Kingdom of Godthis was the theme on which Jesus bade His followers preach, but we have not heard of it up to this point since Act 1:3and the name of Jesus Messiah, the instrument on which they relied for their works of power, the Samaritans turned away from Simon and accepted baptism. Simon himself became a convert, was baptized, and attached himself to Philip, wondering at his signs and great acts of power.

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

Verse 9

Used sorcery; pretended to possess supernatural powers.–Bewitched the people; amazed and bewildered them.

Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament

8:9 {5} But there was a certain man, called Simon, which beforetime in the same city used {b} sorcery, and {c} bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one:

(5) Christ overcomes Satan as often as he desires, and carries him about as it were in triumph, in the sight of those whom Satan deceived and bewitched.

(b) The word which is used in this place was at first used of good things, and is borrowed from the language of the Persians, who call their wise men by that name; but afterwards it was used of evil things.

(c) He had so allured the Samaritans with his witchcraft that as blind and mad idiots they were wholly addicted to him.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

Simon the Sorcerer’s conversion 8:9-13

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Another person who was doing miracles in Samaria, but by satanic power, was Simon, whom people have sometimes called Simon Magus. Magus is the transliteration of the Greek word magos meaning magician or sorcerer. The magic that he did was not sleight of hand deception but sorcery: the ability to control people and or nature by demonic power. This ability had made Simon very popular, and he had encouraged people to think that he was a great power whom God had sent. [Note: See ibid., p. 358, forthe teaching of the early church fathers concerning Simon.]

"As the counterfeit of the true, these false prophets were among the most dangerous enemies of Christianity; and the distinction between the true and the false, between religion and spiritualism, had to be sharply drawn once for all." [Note: Rackham, p. 113.]

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

lete_me Act 8:9-10

Chapter 17

SIMON MAGUS AND THE CONVERSION OF SAMARIA.

Act 8:5; Act 8:9-10

THE object of the earlier part of this book of the Acts is to trace the steady, gradual development of the Church among the Jews, the evolution, never ceasing for a moment, of that principle of true catholic and universal life which the Master implanted within her, and which never ceased working till the narrow, prejudiced, illiberal little company of Galileans, who originally composed the Church, became the emancipated Church of all nations. This process of development was carried on, as we have already pointed out, through the agency of the Hellenistic Jews, and specially of the deacons who were so intimately connected with that class. We have in the last few chapters surveyed the history of one deacon, St. Stephen; we are now led to the story of another, St. Philip. His activity, as described in the eighth chapter, runs upon exactly the same lines. St. Stephen proclaims the universal principles of the gospel; St. Philip acts upon these principles, going down to the city of Samaria, and preaching Christ there. The prominent position which the deacons had for the time taken is revealed to us by two notices. Philip leaves Jerusalem and goes to Samaria, where the power of the high priest and of the Sanhedrin does not extend, but would rather be violently resisted. Here he is safe for the time, till the violence of the persecution should blow over. And yet, though Philip has to leave Jerusalem, the Apostles remain hidden by the obscurity into which they had for a little fallen, owing to the supreme brilliancy of St. Stephen: “They were all scattered abroad except the Apostles.” The deacons were obliged to fly, the Apostles could remain: facts which sufficiently show the relative positions the two classes occupied in the public estimation, and illustrate that law of the Divine working which we so often see manifesting it self in the course of the Churchs chequered career, the last shall be first and the first last. God, on this occasion, as evermore, chooses His own instruments, and works by them as and how He pleases.

I. This reticence and obscurity of the Apostles may seem to us now somewhat strange, as it certainly does seem most strange how the Apostles could have remained safe at Jerusalem when all others had to fly. The Apostles naturally now appear to us the most prominent members of the Jerusalem, nay, farther, of the Christian Church throughout the world. But then, as we have already observed, one of the great difficulties in historical study is to get at the right point of view, and to keep ourselves at that point under very varying combinations of circumstances. We are apt to fling ourselves back, or, if the expression be allowed, to project ourselves backwards into the past, and to think that men must always have attributed the same importance to particular persons or particular circumstances as we do. We now see the whole course of events, and can estimate them, not according to any mere temporary importance or publicity they may have attained, but according to their real and abiding influence. Viewing the matter in this light, we now can see that the Apostles were much more important persons than the deacons. But the question is, not how we regard the Apostles and the deacons, but how did the Sanhedrin and the Jews of Jerusalem in Stephens and Philips time view these two classes. They knew nothing of the Apostles as such. They knew of them simply as unlearned and ignorant men, who had been once or twice brought before the Council. They knew of Stephen, and perhaps, too, of Philip, as cultured Grecian Jews, whose wisdom and eloquence and persuasive power they were not able to resist; and it is no wonder that in the eyes of the Sadducean majority, who then ruled the Jewish senate, the deacons should be specially sought out and driven away.

The action of the Apostles themselves may have conduced to this. Here let us recur to a thought we have already touched upon. We are inclined to view the Apostles as if the Spirit which guided them totally destroyed their human personality and their human feelings. We are apt to cherish towards the Apostles the same reverential but misleading feeling which the believers of the early church cherished towards the prophets, and against which St. James clearly protested when he said, “Elijah was a man of like passions with ourselves.” We are inclined to think of them as if there was nothing weak or human or mistaken about them, and yet there was plenty of all these qualities in their character and conduct. The Apostles were older than the deacons, and they were men of much narrower ideas, of a more restricted education. They had less of that facility of temper, that power of adaptation, which learning and travel combined always confer. They may have been somewhat suspicious too of the headlong course pursued by Stephen and his fellows. Their Galilean minds did not work out logical results so rapidly as their Hellenistic friends and allies. They had been slow of heart to believe with the Master. They were slow of heart and mind to work out principles and to grasp conclusions when taught by His servants and followers. The Apostles were, after all, only men, and they had their treasure in earthen vessels. Their inspiration, and the presence of the Spirit within their hearts, were quite consistent with intellectual slowness, and with mental inability to recognise at once the leadings of Divine Providence. It was just then the same as it has ever been in Church history. The older generation is always somewhat suspicious of the younger. It is slow to appreciate its ideas, hopes, aspirations, and it is well perhaps that the older generation is suspicious, because it thus puts on a drag which gives time for prudence, forethought, and patience to come into play. These may appear very human motives to attribute to the Apostles, but then we lose a great deal of Divine instruction if we invest the Apostles with an infallibility higher even than that which Roman Catholics attribute to the Pope. For them the Pope is infallible only when speaking as universal doctor and teacher, a position which some among them go so far as to assert he has never taken since the Church was founded, so that in their opinion the Pope has never yet spoken infallibly. But with many sincere Christians the Apostles were infallible, not only when teaching, but when thinking, acting, writing on the most trivial topics, or discoursing on the most ordinary subjects.

II. Let us now turn our attention to Philip and his work, and its bearing on the future history and development of the Church. Here, before we go any farther, it may be well to note how St. Luke gained his knowledge of the events which happened at Samaria. We do not pretend indeed, like some critics, to point out all the sources whence the sacred writers gathered their information. Any one who has ever attempted to write history of any kind must be aware how impossible it often is for the writer himself to trace the sources of his information after the lapse of some time. How much more impossible then must it be for others to trace the original sources whence the sacred or any other ancient writers derived their knowledge, when hundreds and even thousands of years have elapsed. Our own ignorance of the past is a very unsafe ground indeed on which to base our rejection of any ancient document whatsoever.

It is well, however, to note, where and when we can, the sources whence information may have been gained, and fortunately this book of the Acts supplies us with instruction on this very point. A quarter of a century later the same Saul who, doubtless, helped to make St. Philip fly on this occasion from Jerusalem, was dwelling for several days beneath his roof at Caesarea. He was then Paul the Apostle of the Gentiles, who bore in his own person many marks and proofs of his devotion to the cause which Philip had proclaimed and supported while Paul was still a persecutor. The story of the meeting is told us in the twenty-first chapter of this book. St. Paul was on his way to Jerusalem to pay that famous visit which led to his arrest, and, in the long run, to his visit to Rome and trial before Caesar. He was travelling up to Jerusalem by the coast road which led from Tyre, where he landed, through Caesarea, and thence to the Holy City. St. Luke was with him, and when they came to Caesarea they entered into the house of Philip the Evangelist, with whom they abode several days. What hallowed conversations St. Luke must there have listened to! How these two saints, Paul and Philip, would go over the days and scenes long since past and gone! How they would compare experiences and interchange ideas; and there it was that St. Luke must have had abundant opportunities for learning the history of the rise of Christianity in Samaria which here he exhibits to us.

Let us now look a little closer at the circumstances of the case. The place where Philip preached has raised a question. Some have maintained that it was Samaria itself, the capital city, which Philip visited and evangelised. Others have thought that it was a city, – some indefinite city of the district Samaria, probably Sychar, the town where our Lord had taught the Samaritan woman. Some have held one view, some the other, but the Revised Version would seem to incline to the view that it was the capital city which St. Philip visited on this occasion, and not that city which our Lord Himself evangelised. It may to some appear an additional difficulty in the way of accepting Sychar as the scene of St. Philips ministry, that our Lords work and teaching some five years previously would, in that case, seem to have utterly vanished. Philip goes down and preaches Christ to a city which knew nothing of Him. How, some may think, could this have possibly been true, and how could such an impostor as Simon have carried all the people captive, had Christ Himself preached there but a few short years before, and converted the mass of the people to belief in Himself? Now I maintain that it was Samaria, the capital, and not Sychar, some miles distant, that Philip evangelised, but I am not compelled to accept this view by any considerations about Christs own ministry and its results. Our Lord might have taught in the same city where Philip taught, and in the course of five years the effect of His personal ministry might have entirely vanished.

There is no lesson more plainly enforced by the gospel story than this: Christs own personal ministry was a comparatively fruitless one. He taught the Samaritan woman, indeed, and the people of the city were converted, as they said, not so much by her witness as by the power of Christs own words and influence. But then the Holy Ghost was not yet given, the Church was not yet founded, the Divine society which Christ, as the risen Saviour, was to establish, had not yet come into existence; and therefore work like that done at Samaria was a transient thing, passing away like the morning cloud or the early dew, and leaving not a trace behind. Christ came not to teach men a Divine doctrine, so much as to establish a Divine society, and, till this society was established, the work done even by Christ Himself was a fleeting and evanescent thing. The foundation of the Church as a society was absolutely necessary if the doctrine and teaching of Christ were to be preserved. The article of the creed, “I believe in the Holy Catholic Church,” has been neglected, slighted, and undervalued by Protestants. I have heard even of avowed expositors of the Apostles Creed who, when they came to this article, have passed it over with a hasty notice because it did not fit into their narrow systems. And yet here again the Supreme wisdom of the Divine plan has been amply vindicated, and the experience of the New Testament has shown that if there had not been a Church instituted by Christ, and established with Himself as its foundation, rock, and chief corner-stone, the wholesome doctrine and the supernatural teaching of Christ would soon have vanished. I am here indeed reminded of the words and experience of one of the greatest evangelists who have lived since apostolic times. John Wesley, when dealing with a cognate subject, wrote to one of his earliest preachers about the importance of establishing Methodist societies wherever Methodist preachers found access, and he proceeds to urge the necessity for doing so on precisely the same grounds as those on which we explain the failure of our Lords personal ministry, so far at least as present results were concerned. Wesley tells his correspondent that wherever Methodist teaching alone has been imparted, and Methodist societies have not been founded as well, the work has been an utter failure, and has vanished away.

So it was with the Master, Christ Jesus. He bestowed His Divine instruction and imparted His Divine doctrine, but as the time for the outpouring of the Spirit and the foundation of the Church had not yet come, the total result of the personal work and labours of the Incarnate God was simply one hundred and twenty, or at most five hundred souls. It constitutes, then, to our mind no difficulty in the way of regarding Sychar as the scene of Philips teaching, that Christ Himself may have laboured there a few years before, and yet that there should not have been a trace of His labours when St. Philip arrived. The Master might Himself have taught in a town, and yet His disciple s preaching a few years later might have been most necessary, because the Spirit was not yet given. The plain meaning, however, of the words of the Acts is that it was to the city of Samaria, the capital city, that Philip went: and it is most likely that to the capital city a character like Simon would have resorted, and not to any smaller town, as affording him the largest field for the exercise of his peculiar talents, just as afterwards we shall find, in the course of his history, that he resorted to the capital of the world, Rome itself, as the scene most effectual for his purposes.

III. St. Philip went down, then, to Samaria and preached Christ there, and in Samaria he came across the first of those subtle opponents with whom the gospel has ever had to struggle, -men who did not directly oppose the truth, but who corrupted its pure morality and its simple faith by a human admixture, which turned its salutary doctrines into a deadly poison. Philip came to Samaria, and there he found the Samaritans carried away with the teaching and actions of Simon. The preaching of the pure gospel of Jesus Christ, and the exercise of true miraculous power, converted the Samaritans, and were sufficient to work intellectual conviction even in the case of the Magician. All the Samaritans, Simon included, believed and were baptised. This is the introduction upon the stage of history of Simon Magus, whom the earliest Church writers, such as Hegesippus, the father of Church history, who was born close upon the time of St. John, and flourished about the middle of the second century, and his contemporary Justin Martyr, describe as the first of those Gnostic heretics who did so much in the second and third centuries to corrupt the gospel both in faith and practice. The writings of the second and third centuries are full of the achievements and evil deeds of this man Simon, which indeed are related by some writers with so much detail as to form a very considerable romance. Here, then, we find a corroborative piece of evidence as to the early date of the composition of the Acts of the Apostles. Had the Acts been written in the second century, it would have given us some traces of the second-century tradition about Simon Magus; but having been written at a very early period, upon the termination of St. Pauls first imprisonment, it gives us simply the statement about Simon Magus as St. Luke and St. Paul had heard it from the mouth of Philip the Evangelist. St. Luke tells us nothing more, simply because he had no more to tell about this first to the celebrated heretics. When we come to the second century Simons story is told with much more embellishment. The main outlines are, however, doubtless correct. All Christian writers agree in setting forth that after the reproof which, as we shall see, Simon Peter the Apostle bestowed upon the magician, he became a determined opponent of the Apostles, especially of St. Peter, whose work he endeavoured everywhere to oppose and defeat. With this end in view he went to Rome, as Justin Martyr says, in the reign of Claudius Caesar, and as other writers say, in the time of Nero.

There he successfully deceived the people for some time. We have early notices of his success in the Imperial city. Justin Martyr is a writer who came close upon the apostolic age. He wrote an Apology for the Christians, which we may safely assign to some year about 150 A.D. At that time he was a man in middle life, whose elder contemporaries must have been well acquainted with the history and traditions of the previous century. In that first Apology Justin gives us many particulars about Christianity and the early Church, and he tells us, concerning Simon Magus, that his teaching at Rome was so successful in leading the Roman people astray that they erected a statue in his honour, between the two bridges. It is a curious fact, and one, too, which confirms the accuracy of Justin, that in the year 1574 there was dug up on the very spot indicated by Justin, the island in the Tiber, a statue bearing the inscription described by Justin, “Semoni Sanco Deo Fidio.” Critics, indeed, are now pretty generally agreed that this statue was the one seen by Justin, but that it was originally erected in honour of a Sabine deity, and not of the arch-heretic as the Apologist supposed; though there are some who think that the appeal of Justin to a statue placed before mens eyes, and about which many at Rome must have known all the facts, could not have been made on such mistaken grounds. It is not altogether safe to build theories or offer explanations based on our ignorance, and opposed to the plain, distinct statements of a writer like Justin, who was a contemporary with the events of which he speaks. It seems indeed a plausible explanation to say that Justin Martyr mistook the name of a Sabine deity for that of an Eastern heretic. But there may have been two statues and two inscriptions on the island, one to the heretic, another to the ancient Sabine god. Later writers of the second and third centuries improved upon Justins story, and entered into great details of the struggles between Simon and the two Apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, terminating in the death of the magician when attempting to fly up to heaven in the presence of the Emperor Nero. His death did not, however, put an end to his influence. The evil which he did and taught lived long afterwards. His followers continued his teaching and proved themselves active opponents of the truth, seducing many proselytes by the apparent depth and subtlety of their views. Such is the history of Simon Magus as it is told in Church history, but we are now concerned simply with the statements put forward in the passage before us. There Simon appears as a teacher who led the Samaritans captive by his sorcery, which he used as the basis of his claim to be recognised as “that power of God which is called Great.” Magic and sorcery have always more or less prevailed, and do still prevail, in the Eastern world, and have ever been used in opposition to the gospel of Christ, just as the same practices, under the name of Spiritualism, have shown themselves hostile to Christianity in Western Europe and in America. The tales of modern travellers in India and the East, respecting the wondrous performances of Indian jugglers, remind us strongly of the deeds of Jannes and Jambres who withstood Moses, and illustrate the sorcery which Simon Magus used for the deception of the Samaritans. The Jews, indeed, were everywhere celebrated at this period for their skill in magical incantations-a. well-known fact, of which we find corroborative evidence in the Acts. Bar-Jesus, the sorcerer who strove to turn the proconsul of Cyprus from the faith, was a Jew. {Act 13:6-12} In the nineteenth chapter we find the seven sons of Sceva, the Jewish priest, exercising the same trade of sorcery; while, as is well known from references in the classical writers, the Jews at Rome were famous for the same practices.

These statements of writers sacred and secular alike have been confirmed in the present age. There has been a marvellous discovery of ancient documents in Egypt within the last twelve or fifteen years, which were purchased by the Austrian government and duly transferred to Vienna, where they have been investigated. They are usually called the Fayum Manuscripts. They contain some of the oldest documents now existing, and embrace among them large quantities of magical writings, with the Hebrew formulae used by the Jewish sorcerers when working their pretended miracles. So wondrously does modern discovery confirm the statements and details of the New Testament!

It is not necessary now to discuss the question whether the achievements of sorcery and magic, either ancient or modern, have any reality about them, or are a mere clever development of sleight of hand, though we incline to the view which admits a certain amount of reality about the wonders performed, else how shall we account for the doings of the Egyptian magicians, the denunciations of sorcery and witchcraft contained in the Bible, as well as in many statements in the New Testament? A dry and cold age of materialism, without life and fire and enthusiasm, like the last century, was inclined to explain away such statements of the Scriptures. But man has now learned to be more distrustful of himself and the extent of his discoveries. We know so little of the spirit world, and have seen of late such strange psychological manifestations in connection with hypnotism, that the wise man will hold his judgment in suspense, and not hastily conclude, with the men of the eighteenth century, that possession with devils was only another name for insanity, and that the deeds of sorcerers were displays of mere unassisted human skill and subtlety. As it was with the Jews, so was it with the Samaritans. They were indeed bitterly separated the one from the other, but their hopes, ideas, and faith were fundamentally alike. The relations between the Samaritans and the Jews were at the period of which we treat very like those which exist between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Ulster, -professing different forms of the same faith, yet regarding, one another with bitterer feelings than if far more widely separated. So it was with the Jews and Samaritans; but the existing hostility did not change nature and its essential tendencies, and therefore as the Jews practised sorcery, so did Simon, who was a native of Samaria; and with his sorcery he ministered to the Messianic expectation which flourished among the Samaritans equally as among the Jews. The Samaritan woman testified to this in her conversation with our Lord, and as she was a woman of a low position and of a sinful character, her language proves that her ideas must have had a wide currency among the Samaritan people. “The woman saith unto Him, I know that Messiah cometh, which is called Christ: when He is come, He will declare unto us all things.” Simon took advantage of this expectation, and gave himself out to be “that power of God which is called Great”; testifying by his assertion to the craving which existed all through the Jewish world for the appearance of the long-expected deliverer, a craving which we again find manifesting itself in the many political pretenders who sprang up in the regions of more orthodox Judaism, as Josephus amply shows. The world, in fact, and specially the world which had been affected with Jewish ideas and Jewish thought, was longing for a deeper teaching and for a profounder spiritual life than it had as yet known. It was athirst for God, yea, even for the living God; and when it could find nothing better, it turned aside and strove to quench the souls desires at the impure fountains which magic and sorcery supplied.

IV. Philip the Evangelist came with his teaching into a society which acknowledged Simon as its guide, and his miracles at once struck the minds of the beholders. They were miracles worked, like the Masters, without any secret preparations, without the incense, the incantations, the muttered formulae which accompanied the lying wonders of the magician.

They formed a contrast in another direction too, -no money was demanded, no personal aims or low objects were served; the thorough unselfishness of the evangelist was manifest. Then, too, the teaching which accompanied the miracles was their best evidence. It was a teaching-of righteousness, of holy living, of charity, of humility; it was transparently unworldly. It was. not like Simons, which gave out that he himself was some great one, and treated of himself alone; but it dealt with “the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ”; and the teaching and the miracles, testifying the one to the other, came home to the hearts of the people, leading them captive to the foot of the Cross. It has often been a debated question whether miracles alone are a sufficient evidence of the truth of a doctrine, or whether the doctrine needs to be compared with the miracles to see if its character be worthy of the Deity. The teaching of the New Testament seems to, be plainly this, that miracles, in themselves, are not a sufficient evidence. Our Lord warns His disciples that deceivers shall one day come working mighty signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if it be possible, even the very elect; and He exhorts His disciples to be on their guard against them. But while miracles alone are no sufficient evidence of the truth of a doctrine, they were a very needful assistance to the doctrines of the gospel in the age and country when and where Christianity took its rise. Whether the sorcery and magic and wonders of Simon, and the other false teachers against whom the Apostles had to contend, were true or false, genuine or mere tricks, still they would have given the false teachers a great advantage over the preachers of the gospel, had the latter not been armed with real divine supernatural power which enabled them, as occasion required, to fling the magical performances completely into the shade. The miraculous operations of the Apostles seem to have been restricted in the same way as Christ restricted the working of His own supernatural power. The Apostles never worked miracles for the relief of themselves or of their friends and associates. St. Paul was detained through infirmity of the flesh in Galatia, and that infirmity led him to preach the gospel to the Galatian Celts. He did not, perhaps he could not, employ his. miraculous power to cure himself, just as our Lord refused to use His miraculous power to turn stones into bread. St. Paul depended upon human skill and love for his cure, using probably for that purpose the medical knowledge and. assistance of St. Luke, whom we find shortly afterwards in his company. Miraculous power was bestowed upon the first Christian teachers, not for the purposes of display or of selfish gratification, but simply for the sake of Gods kingdom and mans salvation.

And as it was with St. Paul so was it with his companions. Timothy was exhorted to betake himself to human remedies to cure his physical weakness, while when another apostolic man, Trophimus, was sick, he was left behind. by the Apostle at Miletus till he should get well. {2Ti 4:20} Miracles were for the sake of unbelievers, not of believers, and for this purpose we cannot see how they could have been done without, under the circumstances in which the gospel was launched into the world. Mans nature had been so thoroughly corrupted, the whole moral atmosphere had been so permeated with wickedness, the whole moral tone of society had been so terribly lowered, that the Apostles might have come preaching the purest morality, the most Divine wisdom, and it would have fallen on ears so deaf, and eyes so blind, and hearts so seared and hardened, that it would have had no effect unless they had possessed miraculous power which, as occasion demanded, served to call attention to their teaching. But when the preliminary barriers had been broken down, and the miracles had fulfilled their purpose, then the preaching of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ did their work. Here again a thought comes forward on which we have already said a little. The subject matter of Philips preaching is described in the fifth verse as Christ, “Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and proclaimed unto them the Christ,” and then in the twelfth verse it is expanded for us into “the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ.” These two subjects are united. The kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ. The Apostles taught no diluted form of Christianity. They preached the name of Jesus Christ, and they also taught a Divine society which He had established and which was to be the means of completing the work of Christ in the world. Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Apostles recognised the great truth, that a mere preaching of a philosophical or religious doctrine would have been of very little use in reforming the world. They therefore preached a Church which should be the pillar and ground of the truth, which should gather up, safeguard, and teach the truth whose principles the Apostles set forth. To put it in plain language, the Evangelist St. Philip must have taught the doctrine of a Church of Jesus Christ as well as of a doctrine of Jesus Christ. Had the doctrine of Jesus Christ been taught without and separate from the doctrine of a Church, the doctrine of Christs person and character might have vanished, just as the doctrine of Plato or Aristotle or that of any of the great ancient teachers vanished. But Jesus Christ had come into the world to establish a Divine society, with ranks, gradations, and orderly arrangements; He had come to establish a kingdom, and they all knew then what a kingdom meant. For the Greek, Roman, or Jewish mind, a kingdom meant more even than it does for us. It meant in their conceptions a despotism where the king ordered and did just what he liked. The Romans, in fact, abominated the name king, and invented the term emperor instead, because for them the word king connoted what it does not connote for us, the possession and exercise of absolute power. Yet, for all this, the Apostles preached Christ as a King and His society as a kingdom, because in that new society which He had called into existence, the graces, the gifts, the offices of the society are totally dependent upon and entirely subservient to Jesus Christ alone.

How wondrously the life, the activity, the fervour and power of the Church would have been changed had this truth been always recognised. The Church of Jesus Christ, as regards its hidden secret life, is a despotism. It depends upon Christ alone. It depends not upon the State, not upon man, not upon wealth or position or earthly influences of any kind: it depends upon Christ alone. The Church has often forgot this secret of its strength. It has trusted in the arm of flesh, and has relied upon human patronage and power, and then it has grown, perhaps, m grandeur and importance as far as the world is concerned; but, as it has grown in one direction, it has lost in the other, and that the only direction worthy a Churchs attention. The temptation to rely on the help of the world alone has assailed the Church in various ways. It assails individual Christians, it assails congregations, it assails the Church at large. All of them, whether individuals, congregations, or churches, are apt to imagine that power and prosperity consist in wealth, or worldly position, or the number of adherents, forgetting that Christ alone is the source of power to the Church or to individual souls, and that where He is wanting, no matter what may be the outward appearance, or the numerical increase, or the political influence, there indeed all true life has departed.

V. The results of Philips teaching and work in Samaria were threefold.

(1) The Samaritans believed Philip, and among the believers was Simon. There are some people who teach faith and nothing else, and imagine that if they lead men to exercise belief then the whole work of Christianity is done. This incident at the very outset of the Churchs history supplies a warning against any such one-sided teaching. The Samaritans believed, and so did Simon the Magician, who had for long deceived them. The very same word is used here for the faith exercised by the Samaritans and by Simon, as we find used to describe the belief of the three thousand on the day of Pentecost, or of the Philippian jailer who accepted St. Pauls teaching amid all the terror. of the earthquake and the opened prison. They were all intellectually convinced and had all accepted the Christian faith as a great reality. Intellectual faith in Christ is the basis on which a true living faith which works by love is grounded. A faith of the heart which is not based on a faith of the head is very much akin to a superstition. Of course we know that there are people whose faith is deep-rooted and fruitful who cannot state the grounds of their belief, but they are well aware that others can thus state it, that their faith is capable of being put into words and defended in argument. Intellectual faith in Christianity must ever be regarded as a gift of the Holy Ghost, according to that profound word of the Apostle, “No man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Ghost.” But intellectual faith in the truth and reality of Christs mission may exist in a heart where there is no sense of sin and of spiritual want, and then belief in Christ avails nothing. There were cravings after righteousness and peace in Samaritan bosoms, but there was none in one heart, at least, and that heart was therefore unblessed. The results of St. Philips work teaches us that faith is not everything in the Christian life.

(2) Again, we find that another result was that the Samaritans were all baptised, including their arch-deceiver Simon. Philip, then, in the course of his preaching of Christ, must have told them of Christs law of baptism. The preaching of the name of Jesus Christ and of the kingdom of God must have included a due setting forth of His laws and ordinances. We do no honour to Christ when we neglect any part of His revelation. If God has revealed any doctrine or any practice or any sacrament, it must be of the very greatest importance. The mere fact of its revelation by Him makes it of importance, no matter how we, in our shortsighted wisdom, may think otherwise. Philip set forth therefore the whole counsel of God, and as the result all the Samaritans were baptised, including Simon; but then again, as Simons case taught that faith by itself availed not to change the heart, so Simons ease teaches that baptism, neither alone nor in conjunction with intellectual faith, avails to convert the soul and purify the character. God offers His graces and His blessings, faith and baptism, but unless there be receptivity, unless there be consent of the will, and a thirst of the soul and a longing of the heart after spiritual things, the graces and gifts of the Spirit will be offered in vain.

(3) And then, lastly, the final and abiding result of Philips work was, there was great joy in that city. They rejoiced because their souls had found the truth, which alone, can satisfy the cravings of the human heart and minister a joy which leaves no sting behind, but is a joy pure and exhaustless. The joys of earth are always mixed, and the more mixed the more unsatisfying.

The joy of a Christian Soul which knows Christ and His preciousness, which has been delivered by Christ from deceit and impurity and vice, as these Samaritans had, and which feels and enjoys the new light thrown on life by Christs revelations, that joy is a surpassing one, ravishing the soul, satisfying the intellect, purifying the life. There was great joy in that city, and no wonder, for as the poet has well sung, contrasting the “worlds gay garish feast” with Gods sacred consolations bestowed upon holy souls, –

“Who, but a Christian, through all life That blessing may prolong? Who, through the worlds sad day of strife, Still chant his morning song?”

“Such is Thy banquet, dearest Lord; O give us grace to cast Our lot with Thine to trust Thy word, And keep our best till last.”

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary