that we suffer, even when killed by friends, He foretold would take place; so that it is manifest no word or act of His can be found fault with. Wherefore we pray for you and for all other men who hate us; in order that you, having repented along with us, may not blaspheme Him who, by His works, by the mighty deeds even now wrought through His name, by the words He taught, by the prophecies announced concerning Him, is the blameless, and in all things irreproachable, Christ Jesus; but, believing on Him, may be saved in His second glorious advent, and may not be condemned to fire by Him. (Dialogue with Trypho 35) Clement of Alexandria (c. 195) advises against giving into heretical men and their heresies in writing: He who hopes for everlasting rest knows also that the entrance to it is toilsome "and strait." And let him who has once received the Gospel, even in the very hour in which he has come to the knowledge of salvation, "not turn back, like Lot's wife," as is said; and let him not go back either to his former life, which adheres to the things of sense, or to heresies. . . . He, who has spurned the ecclesiastical tradition, and darted off to the opinions of heretical men, has ceased to be a man of God and to remain faithful to the Lord. (The Stromata, Book 7:16) Cyprian (c. 251) bids his readers to "use foresight and watching with an anxious heart, both to perceive and to beware of the wiles of the crafty foe, that we, who have put on Christ the wisdom of God the Father, may not seem to be wanting in wisdom in the matter of providing for our salvation" (The Treatises of Cyprian 1:1). He cautions that "it is not persecution alone that is to be feared; nor those things which advance by open attack to overwhelm and cast down the servants of God," for we have an enemy who is to be more feared and guarded against because he secretly creeps in to deceive us under the appearance of peace (The Treatises of Cyprian 1:1). By following the example of the Lord in recognizing and resisting the temptations of the devil, Christians will not be "incautiously turned back into the nets of death," but go on to "possess the immortality that