Apostolic Constitutions

Observe, you who are our beloved sons, how merciful yet righteous the Lord our God is, how gracious and kind to humankind. And yet most certainly “he will not acquit the guilty,” though he welcomes returning sinners and revives them, leaving no room for suspicion to such as wish to judge sternly and to reject offenders entirely, and to refuse to grant them exhortations which might bring them to repentance. In contradiction to such, God by Isaiah says to the bishops, “Comfort you, comfort you my people, you priests; speak comfortably to Jerusalem.” It therefore behooves you, upon hearing those words of his, to encourage those who have offended, and lead them to repentance, and afford them hope, and not vainly to suppose that you shall be partakers of their offenses on account of such your love to them. Receive the penitent with alacrity and rejoice over them, and with mercy and bowels of compassion judge the sinners. For if a person was walking by the side of a river and ready to stumble, and you should push him and thrust him into the river instead of offering him your hand for his assistance, you would be guilty of the murder of your brother.… You ought rather to lend your helping hand as he was ready to fall, lest he perish without remedy, that both the people may take warning and the offender may not utterly perish. It is your duty, O bishop, neither to overlook the sins of the people nor to reject those who are penitent, that you may not unskillfully destroy the Lord’s flock or dishonor his new name which is stamped upon his people, and you yourself be reproached as those ancient pastors were, of whom God speaks thus to Jeremiah: “Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard; they have polluted my heritage.” And in another passage, “My anger is waxed hot against the shepherds, and against the lambs shall I have indignation.”

And in another place: “And I was reckoned with the transgressors.” Then there was darkness for three hours, from the sixth to the ninth, and again light in the evening; as it is written: “It shall not be day or night, and at the evening there shall be light.” All [these] things, when those malefactors saw that they were crucified with him, the one of them reproached him as though he was weak and unable to deliver himself. But the other rebuked the ignorance of his fellow, and turning to the Lord, as being enlightened by him, and acknowledging who he was that suffered, he prayed that he would remember him in his kingdom hereafter. He then presently granted him the forgiveness of his former sins and brought him into paradise to enjoy the mystical good things. He also cried about the ninth hour, and said to his Father, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” And a little afterward, when he had cried with a loud voice, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” and had added, “into your hands I commit my spirit,” he gave up his spirit and was buried before sunset in a new sepulcher. But when the first day of the week dawned, he arose from the dead and fulfilled those things that before his passion he foretold to us, saying, “The Son of man must continue in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.” And when he was risen from the dead, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, then to Cleopas in the way, and after that to us his disciples, who had fled away for fear of the Jews but privately were very inquisitive about him. But these things are also written in the Gospels.