As to Christians, the memory of Simon was amongst them an abomination. Those illusions of his which so closely resembled their own, were irritating to them. To have competed with the success of the apostles was the most unpardonable of crimes. They pretended that the wonders performed by Simon and his disciples were works of the devil, and they branded the Samaritan theosophist with the title of "Sorcerer,"[15.41] which his believers took in high dudgeon. The entire Christian account of Simon bears the imprint of concentrated hatred. The maxims of quietism were ascribed to him, with the excesses which are generally supposed to be their consequence.{15.42} He was considered the father of all error, the primitive heresiarch. They delighted in recounting his ludicrous adventures, and his defeats by the apostle Peter,[15.43] and attributed to the vilest motives his apparent tendency towards Christianity. They were so preoccupied with his name that they read it at random upon columns where it did not exist.[15.44] The symbolism in which he had clothed his ideas was interpreted in the most grotesque way. The "Helena," whom he identified with "The First Intelligence," became a girl of the town purchased by him in the streets of Tyre.[15.45] His very name, hated nearly as much as that of Judas, and used as a synonym of _Anti-apostle,_[15.46] became the grossest word of abuse and a proverbial expression to designate a professional impostor or adversary of truth whom it was desired to refer to under a disguise.[15.47] He was the first enemy of Christianity, or rather the first personage whom Christianity treated as such. It is sufficient to say that neither pious frauds nor calumny were spared in defaming him.[15.48] Criticism in such a case need not attempt a rehabilitation; it has no documents on the other side. All it can do is to show the physiognomy of the traditions and the set purpose of abuse which they display. At least it should prevent the loading of the memory of the Samaritan theurgist with a resemblance which may be only accidental. In a story related by Josephus, a Jewish sorcerer named Simon, a native of Cyprus, plays for the procurator Felix the part of a Pandarus.{15.49} The circumstances of this story do not accord well enough with what is known of Simon of Gitto, to make him responsible for the acts of a person who may have had nothing in common with him but a name borne by thousands, and a pretension to supernatural powers, which was unfortunately shared by a crowd of his cotemporaries. CHAPTER XVI. GENERAL PROGRESS OF THE CHRISTIAN MISSIONS.