The great defender of Orthodoxy against the Nestorian heresy in the fifth century, St. Cyril of Alexandria, in one of his epistles to Nestorios, exhorts the latter to call the Holy Virgin the “Mother of God” and thus, by the “preservation of right thinking (orthen...doxan), to serve the common faith in peace and concord.” [¹³] Likewise, in a letter of defense against his accusers, St. Cyril writes: “I have set forth the doctrine of the true faith (tes orthes pisteos) to those who were tempted by the interpretations of Nestorios.” [¹⁴] Similarly, in the eighth century, the great Church hymnographer, St. John of Damascus, in his dogmatic Theotokion (in the third tone) against the heresy of Nestorios, beseeches the Most Holy Virgin to intercede before Jesus Christ our Lord and “...to save the souls of those who confess her as Mother of God in an Orthodox way (orthodoxos).”