The distinction between venial and mortal sin is a feature of Roman Catholic moral theology that divides sins into two essentially different classes by their effect upon the soul’s state of grace. A mortal sin, on this scheme, is a grave transgression committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent; it “kills” the soul by destroying the indwelling grace of God (charity), so that the one who dies in such a sin unrepented and unabsolved is damned. A venial sin is a lesser fault, or a grave matter done without full knowledge or full consent; it wounds but does not destroy the life of grace, may be remitted by various means short of sacramental confession, and does not of itself merit eternal death. The Reformed tradition rejects this distinction as Rome frames it, on two grounds. First, while Scripture plainly teaches that not all sins are equally heinous—some are aggravated by knowledge, circumstance, and the dignity of the One offended—it does not divide sins into a class that damns and a class that does not, for every sin, as a transgression of the law of the eternal God, deserves His wrath and curse, and the wages of sin—sin as such—is death. Second, the scheme is bound up with the sacramental and penitential system, the treasury of merit, purgatory, and indulgences, by which the church administers the remission of mortal sins, obscuring the gospel of free justification. The Reformed confess instead that all sin is mortal in its desert, yet no sin is mortal to the believer in the sense of severing him from Christ, since those truly united to the Savior can never finally fall away; their sins are real and grievous and to be repented of, but they cannot extinguish a grace that rests on Christ’s finished work and God’s eternal election.