The remainder of the story told us in the Acts of the Apostles reveals the origin of a word which appears too often in the religious history of the Middle Ages for us to let slip the opportunity of here explaining it by a fact which, moreover, helps to show how it happened that Simon fell from sincere Christianity into heresy. The apostles at that time residing in Jerusalem, having heard of the conversion of Samaria, they came to lay hands upon--that is to say confirm--the newly baptized; and the latter, when they received the Holy Ghost, were visible partakers of His marvellous gifts, which were general in the primitive Church. The Scripture says, “And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost. But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.... Repent, therefore, of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee.... Then answered Simon, and said, Pray ye to the Lord for me, that none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me.” It is because _Simon_ was the first who attempted to buy for money a spiritual power that his crime was called _simony_, and that the epithet of _simonist_ was applied to all who purchased ecclesiastical cures. [Illustration: Fig. 306.--Babylon the Great (_mulier super bestiam_), represented as a woman holding a cup, and riding the beast spoken of in the Apocalypse.--Miniature from a “Commentaire sur quelques Livres de l’Ecriture,” a Manuscript of the Eleventh Century, in the National Library, Paris. From Count Bastard’s great work.] The repentance of Simon the heretic did not last long, for an author of the third century, whose account is confirmed by a passage in Suetonius, tells us that this neophyte having returned to his practice of magic, and being jealous of the influence which the apostles had acquired by their miracles, boasted that he would raise himself into the air in the presence of the emperor and the people. In order to humiliate St. Peter, who was in Rome at that time, he insisted that the apostle should be present to witness this triumph of his magical art. At first his endeavours seemed as if about to succeed--he was lifted high into the air amidst the applause of the crowd; but Peter invoked the aid of his Divine Master to confound the spirit of evil, and at his prayer the magician, suddenly abandoned by the demon who had been lending him his aid, fell to the ground and broke his leg so near to the spot where Nero was sitting, that, to quote Suetonius, the blood spurted on to the emperor’s mantle.