“Dropping the name of Jesus,” says the Bishop of Salamis, “they neither call themselves _Iessaens_, nor continue to hold the name of the Jews, nor name themselves Christians, but _Nazarenes_.... The resurrection of the dead is confessed by them ... but concerning Christ, _I cannot say_ whether they think him a _mere man_, or as the _truth is_, confess that he was born through the _Holy Pneuma_ from the Virgin.”[333] While Simon Magus argues in the _Homilies_ from the standpoint of every Gnostic (Nazarenes and Ebionites included), Peter, as a true apostle of circumcision, holds to the old Law and, as a matter of course, seeks to blend his belief in the divinity of Christ with his old Faith in the “Lord God” and ex-protector of the “chosen people.” As the author of _Supernatural Religion_ shows, the Epitome,[334] “a blending of the other two, probably intended to purge them from heretical doctrine”[335] and, together with a great majority of critics, assigns to the _Homilies_, a date not earlier than the end of the third century, we may well infer that they must differ widely with their original, if there ever was one. Simon the Magician proves throughout the whole work that the Demiurgus, the Architect of the World, is not the highest Deity; and he bases his assertions upon the words of Jesus himself, who states repeatedly that “no man knew the Father.” Peter is made in the _Homilies_ to repudiate, with a great show of indignation, the assertion that the Patriarchs were not deemed worthy to know the Father; to which Simon objects again by quoting the words of Jesus, who thanks the “Lord of Heaven and earth that what was concealed from the wise” he has “revealed to babes,” proving very logically that according to these very words the Patriarchs could not have known the “Father.” Then Peter argues, in his turn, that the expression, “what is _concealed_ from the wise,” etc., referred to the concealed _mysteries_ of the creation.[336]