Council of Valence III, 855

the grace of God they remain faithfully in their redemption, bearing in their hearts the voice of their God Himself: "Who . . . perseveres even unto the end, he will be saved" [Matt. 10:22; 24:13]; that others, because they were unwilling to remain in the safety of faith, which in the beginning they received, and because they choose by wrong teaching or by a wrong life to make void rather than to preserve the grace of redemption, came in no way to the fullness of salvation and to the reception of eternal beatitude. In both certainly we have the doctrine of the holy Doctor: "We who are baptized in Christ Jesus, are baptized in His death" [Rom. 6:3], and: "All you who are baptized in Christ have put on Christ" [Gal. 3:27], and again: "Let us approach with a true heart in fullness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with clean water let us hold unwavering the confession of our hope" [Heb. 10:22], and again: "For to us sinning willfully after the accepted knowledge of the truth, there is now left no sacrifice for sins" [Heb. 10:26], and again: "He who making void the law of Moses, dies without mercy with two or three witnesses. How much more do you think he deserves worse punishments, who has crushed under foot the son of God, and has considered the blood of the testament unclean, by which he was sanctified, and has offered insult to the Spirit of grace?" [Heb. 10:28].

325. Can. 6. Likewise concerning grace, through which those who believe are saved, and without which never has a rational creature lived happily, and concerning free will weakened through sin in our first parents, but reintegrated and healed through the grace of our Lord Jesus for His faithful, we most constant and in complete faith confess the same, which the most Holy Fathers by the authority of the Sacred Scriptures have left for us to hold, which the Synod of Africa and the Synod of Orange [n. 174 ff.] have professed, which the most blessed Pontiffs of the Apostolic See in the Catholic faith have held; but also concerning nature and grace, we presume in no manner to change to another way. We thoroughly refute, however, the foolish questions, and the utterly old wives' tales, the porridge of the Scoti bearing nausea to the purity of faith, which in these most dangerous and grave times, to the summit of our labors even up to the dividing of charity wretchedly and tearfully have arisen, lest Christian minds henceforth be corrupted and cut off even from the purity of faith, which is in Christ [II Cor. 11:3] Jesus, and we warn by the love of our Lord Christ that brotherly charity, by being on its guard, protects the hearing from such things. Let the brotherhood recall that it is hard pressed by the very grave evils of the world, by the excessive harvest of iniquity, and that it is most cruelly suffocated by the chaff of light men. Let it have zeal to conquer these things; let it labor to correct these things; and let it not burden the assembly with the inanities of those who grieve