Posted at The Reformed Reader : On December 13, 1545, the first session of the Council of Trent took place under Pope Paul III. This council was an official council of the Roman Catholic church which met to discuss, among other things, the teachings of the Reformation – the teachings which most Roman Catholics of the day considered heretical. Obviously there is a lot to discuss about the Council of Trent, but in this blog post I simply want to focus on the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints which the Reformers taught and Rome rejected. Here’s Canon 16 of the Sixth Session of the Council : “If anyone says that he will for certain, with an absolute and infallible certainty, have that great gift of perseverance even to the end, unless he shall have learned this by a special revelation, let him be anathema [accursed].” The Reformed teaching, later agreed upon in the Confessions ( Reformed and Presbyterian ) can be summarized by these words from the Canons of Dort (Article 5
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