Clementine Homilies

When Appion and those who were with him heard this, they howled and lamented, saying: “Why did you not receive him?” And when at the same time Athenodorus wished to say to me, “It was Faustus, your father;” Appion anticipated him, and said, “We learned from some one that Simon, finding him, urged him to go along with him, Faustus himself entreating him, since he did not wish to see his sons after they had become Jews. And hearing this, we came, for his own sake, in search of him.

But since he is not here, it is plain that he spoke the truth who gave us the information which we, hearing it from him, have given to you.” And I Clement, perceiving the design of Peter, that he wished to beget a suspicion in them that he intended to look out among them for the old man, that they might be afraid and take to flight, assisted in his design, and said to Appion: “Listen to me, my dearest Appion. We were eager to give to him, as being our father, what we ourselves deemed to be good. But if he himself did not wish to receive it, but, on the contrary, fled from us in horror, I shall make a somewhat harsh remark, 'Nor do we care for him.'” And when I said this, they went away, as if irritated by my savageness; and, as we learn next day, they went to Judæa in the track of Simon.