Acts 8:20

Thy money perish with thee, &c.— The fathers look upon the first clause of this verse as a prophetical prediction rather than an imprecation. And as for the sin of Simon, it not only consisted in his ambition and avarice, that he would be advanced to the higher dignity, and have those gifts, by the exercise of which he hoped to be the greater gainer; but there was something peculiarly enormous in his crime, as it struck at the very essence of the Christian religion, supposing that the apostles and other Christiansperformedtheirmiraclesinconfirmationofit, by some higher art of magick than that which he had learned; and so they, by the same art, could teach others to do the same works for any other end.