Refutation of All Heresies

Chapter VI.—Simon’s System Expounded in the Work, Great Announcement; Follows Empedocles. Now, to express myself briefly, inasmuch as the fire is of this description, according to Simon, and since all things are visible and invisible, (and) in like manner resonant and not resonant, numerable and not subjects of numeration; he denominates in the Great Announcement a perfect intelligible (entity), after such a mode, that each of those things which, existing indefinitely, may be infinitely comprehended, both speaks, and understands, and acts in such a manner as Empedocles speaks of:— “For earth, indeed, by earth we see, and water by water, And air divine by air, and fire fierce by fire, And love by love, and also strife by gloomy strife.”