Epistula ad episcopum Persarum

To the beloved papa and the clergy under him dwelling in the land of the Persians, Athanasius sends greetings in the Lord. The holy God-inspired Scripture narrates to us the deeds of the ancients, guiding us from them to what is useful in our actions, making us abhor every form of wickedness and impiety. In the Books of Kings, then, it says that Israel sinned and worshipped the creation instead of the Creator. You know how great an evil it is, to abandon the Creator and the glory owed to him, and to attach it to idols and creatures. When they did this, God withdrew his help from them, and they were delivered into servitude to your kings. Having become captives, they were condemned by Shalmaneser, king of the Assyrians, to dwell in the land of the Assyrians instead of their own land, Palestine I mean, in Alae and in Amor, rivers of Gizan, and the mountains of the Medes. He brought in to dwell in Samaria in their place Babylonians from Chuthan, and from Aian, and from Emath, and Sepharouem, and they were settled in the cities of Samaria instead of the sons of Israel. And it happened that at the beginning of their settlement, they did not fear the Lord, and he sent lions against them, and they were killing them. And they said to the king of the Assyrians, saying: The nations which you deported and resettled in the cities of Samaria did not know the judgment of the God of the land, and he sent the lions against them, and behold they are killing them, because they do not know the judgment of the God of the land. And the king of the Assyrians commanded, saying:

Lead them away from there, and let them go, and let them dwell there, and they will enlighten them concerning the judgment of God upon the land. And they brought one of the priests whom they had removed from Samaria, and he settled in Bethel. And the priest was enlightening them, so that they might fear the Lord. And those who were resettled, having been taught the law given to the sons of Israel, did not keep it to the end; but they were serving both the law in part and the ancestral customs. These practices were employed by those cast out by God, because they had a worship that was not pure but mixed, serving neither the law of Moses nor the ancestral customs to the end. Having learned these things, beloved, let us offer to God pure worship, not containing any form of impiety mixed in, but spotless and pious, in which God delights. For He accepts no one, but rather condemns, those who serve two masters. Turn away from your ancestral idolatry; do not join with heretics. For it is better for such persons not to have known the truth than, having known it, to turn back again. For one must say to them: A dog returning to its own vomit, and a sow that has washed herself rolling in the mire. But we are not like this; for we have one God, from whom all things come: a perfect Trinity, consubstantial, of equal power, of equal glory: Father, the source of all good things, from whom the Son was begotten, from whom the Holy Spirit proceeds, according to what is written: one Godhead known in three hypostases.

But in the last times, having taken pity on the race of men, which had slipped into impiety, created in the image and likeness of God, but turned to the worship of the works of their own hands, the only-begotten Son of God, the Word, consubstantial with the Father in divinity and the same consubstantial with us in humanity, lowered himself into voluntary kenosis; and he is incarnate from the holy and Theotokos Virgin; and he regulates our life, having taught how one ought to live through the teaching of the evangelical proclamations; and he suffers in his own flesh, and having plundered Hades, he revived on the third day, and has ascended into the heavens, and sat at the right hand of the majesty in the heights. We expect him to come in the glory of the Father, judging the living and the dead, rendering to each according to his works: to the pious, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man; and sending the impious into the eternal fire, where there is the unending worm, and the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.