De Sancto Athanasio, Liber I-II

I beg you not to take these things badly, which are spoken for the sake of your salvation. For I think you are grieved that I said that through you the serpent attacked us, and that I placed you in many places among those who have been called serpents. Consider your work and theirs, and if you do not recognize that you are one body, say that I do not speak these things justly. You hear your teachers in faithlessness, the Jews, certainly often called serpents in the holy Gospels by the Lord: serpents, offspring of vipers. Why did they deserve to be called by this name? Certainly because of their evil work, certainly because of their own unbelief. Hence John the Baptist also says to them, "Offspring of vipers, who showed you to flee from the coming wrath? Therefore produce worthy fruits of repentance." So just as from among them, those who believed in the only Son of God, who corrected their ways, deserved to become sons of light, while others are called serpents, so also you, unless you produce fruits worthy of repentance, unless you correct your ways, will be called a son of a viper and a serpent. For which of the servants of God, seeing that you are a murderer and a blasphemer, would not call you by the name by which the Jews are called? Who among those who fear God will doubt what you are to pronounce, when he sees that the scribes, Pharisees, and rulers of the Jews are called serpents for this reason, because they both shed the blood of the prophets and denied the only Son of God?

Since these things are so, it remains for you to do penance for your deeds, recognizing that God has granted the mercy of his clemency to all who turn back from evil ways, having the example of the Ninevites, whom if you have imitated, it is necessary that you obtain the help of mercy. Concerning them, hear what was done or what they themselves, terrified by the preaching of Jonah, did. It is commanded, says sacred scripture, to the whale, and it cast Jonah onto the land, and the word of the Lord came to Jonah again, saying: arise and go to Nineveh, the great city, and preach in it according to the earlier preaching which I spoke to you. And Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to what the Lord said to him. Now Nineveh was a great city, as much as a three days' journey. And Jonah began to enter the city as a one day's journey, and he preached and said: within three days, Nineveh will be overthrown. And the men of Nineveh believed God and proclaimed a fast and clothed themselves in sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them. And the word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne and took off his robe and put on sackcloth and sat on ashes. And it was proclaimed by the king of Nineveh and his magistrates, saying: men and cattle and oxen and sheep shall taste nothing, nor shall they eat nor drink water.

and they covered themselves with sackcloth, the men, and they proclaimed, men and beasts alike, urgently before God, and each one turned back from his evil way and from the iniquity of his hands, saying: who knows if God will repent and turn away from the wrath of his fury and we shall not perish? And God saw their work, because each one had turned back from his evil way. And God repented of the malice which he had spoken of doing to them, and he did not do it. And Jonah was grieved with great grief and was confounded, and he prayed before God, saying: O Lord, are these not my words, when I was still on earth? Therefore I had hastened to flee to Tarshish, because I knew that you are merciful and benevolent, patient and merciful, and repenting of evil deeds. And further: and God said to Jonah: if you are so greatly grieved over the gourd, I am greatly grieved unto death. And the Lord said: you spared the gourd, in which you labored not, nor did you nurture it, which was born in the night and perished through the night. But shall I not spare Nineveh, the great city, in which dwell more than one hundred and twenty thousand men who know not right from left? And you, Constantius, if God sees that you have cast off your evil work, if he perceives that your lost ways are corrected and that you have been reformed in all things, believe me, you will begin to be in great happiness among the servants of God.

You have, moreover, the example of the most blessed apostle Paul, lest perhaps you act in these matters through ignorance as he did; for, as soon as you turn to confessing the only Son of God, he will grant you pardon for your crimes, just as he did to him. Follow him, seize upon his way, listen to him speaking to the Philippians, and see who he was before his conversion and how great a blessedness he merited to attain after his conversion. "But if anyone thinks he has confidence in the flesh, I more so, being circumcised on the eighth day, of the race of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew from the Hebrews, according to the law a Pharisee, according to zeal persecuting the church, according to the righteousness which is in the law I lived, being without reproach. These things which were gains for me, I considered losses for the sake of Christ. Nevertheless, I consider everything a loss for the sake of the preeminence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord, for whose sake I have suffered all loss and consider it dung, so that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having my own righteousness which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Jesus Christ, which is righteousness from God in faith, for knowing him and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings, being covered with his death, if in some way I may meet his resurrection from the dead." And as has already been said, imitate this man, follow this man, so that, since .

and he had been what you now are, that is, a persecutor of the Church, a denier of the only Son of God, so that you may be found to have been converted in this way to attaining the heavenly kingdoms, from perfidy to embracing the Catholic faith, thus to have made the transition from death to life. For that he persecuted the Church through ignorance of God, receive also from Timothy, who reveals concerning himself: "We know, however, that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, knowing this, that the law is not laid down for the just; but for the unjust and disobedient and impious and sinners and wicked and profane, parricides and matricides, murderers, unchaste men, consorters with males, kidnappers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is opposed to sound doctrine, which is according to the gospel of the glory of the blessed God that was entrusted to me. And I give thanks to him who strengthened me in Christ Jesus the Lord, that he deemed me worthy of the faith, placing me in the ministry who previously had been a blasphemer and persecutor and injurious; but I have obtained mercy, because what I did in ignorance I did in unbelief. Moreover, the grace of our Lord has abounded with faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus.

Thus you too, from a persecutor, from one who is injurious and blasphemous, will be able to become blessed and truly most dear to God, if, like the blessed Paul, you believe that Jesus Christ is the true Son of God, if you always confess that He has reigned and will reign with the Father—that is, without beginning and without end—if you do not resist the sacred Scriptures crying out that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have one eternity, if finally you believe that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have one divinity; believe me, you will be in the choir of the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs; otherwise, you will blame yourself when you begin to see yourself tormented with the devil and all his minions, because you have scorned these so salutary admonitions of ours.