At last the sorcerer claims to be able to do the same as the Lord, that is, to resurrect from the dead. With this, he is pushing the concept of Magic to its extreme boundaries. Let's read:
Until he came to Rome also and fell foul of the Apostles. Peter withstood him on many occasions. At last he came [...] and began to teach sitting under a plane tree. When he was on the point of being shown up, he said, in order to gain time, that if he were buried alive he would rise again on the third day. So he bade that a tomb should be dug by his disciples and that he should be buried in it. Now they did what they were ordered, but he remained there until now: for he was not the Christ.[14]
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The successor of Simon the sorcerer was Menander:
Menander, [813] who succeeded Simon Magus, [814] showed himself in his conduct another instrument of diabolical power, [815] not inferior to the former. He also was a Samaritan and carried his sorceries to no less an extent than his teacher had done, and at the same time reveled in still more marvelous tales than he.
2. For he said that he was himself the Saviour, who had been sent down from invisible æons for the salvation of men; [816] and he taught that no one could gain the mastery over the world-creating angels themselves [817] unless he had first gone through the magical discipline imparted by him and had received baptism from him. Those who were deemed worthy of this would partake even in the present life of perpetual immortality, and would never die, but would remain here forever, and without growing old become immortal. [818] These facts can be easily learned from the works of Irenæus. [819]
3. And Justin, in the passage in which he mentions Simon, gives an account of this man also, in the following words: [820] "And we know that a certain Menander, who was also a Samaritan, from the village of Capparattea, [821] was a disciple of Simon, and that he also, being driven by the demons, came to Antioch [822] and deceived many by his magical art. And he persuaded his followers that they should not die. And there are still some of them that assert this."
4. And it was indeed an artifice of the devil to endeavor, by means of such sorcerers, who assumed the name of Christians, to defame the great mystery of godliness by magic art, and through them to make ridiculous the doctrines of the Church concerning the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the dead. [823] But they that have chosen these men as their saviours have fallen away from the true hope.
