Cyprian of Carthage

Cyprian was a wealthy and accomplished teacher of rhetoric in Carthage before his baptism in middle age. In a letter to his friend Donatus, written soon afterward, he described what he had felt before and after — beginning with his conviction that his faults were too deep in him to be changed. The translation is the Ante-Nicene Fathers.

and because I despaired of better things, I used to indulge my sins as if they were actually parts of me, and indigenous to me. But after that, by the help of the water of new birth, the stain of former years had been washed away, and a light from above, serene and pure, had been infused into my reconciled heart,—after that, by the agency of the Spirit breathed from heaven, a second birth had restored me to a new man.Cyprian of Carthage, To Donatus 4 (Ante-Nicene Fathers)

Cyprian sold his estates for the benefit of the poor. Within two or three years of his baptism he was made bishop of Carthage. He led his church through the persecution under Decius and an outbreak of plague, and wrote on the unity of the Church and on the readmission of those who had lapsed. In the persecution under Valerian he was beheaded at Carthage in 258. He was born about A.D. 200; his feast is kept on 16 September.