On the Augustinian side: Card. Norisius, _Vindiciae Augustinianae,_ Padua 1677.—*Berti, _De Theologicis Disciplinis_, 8 vols., Rome 1739 sqq.—Bellelli, _Mens Augustini de Modo Reparationis Humanae Naturae_, 2 vols., Rome 1773.—L. de Thomassin, _Mémoires sur la Grâce, etc._, Louvain 1668.
For a list of Molinistic and Congruistic authors see pp. 269 sq.
The point in which these two systems meet, and in regard to which they differ from Thomism and Augustinianism, is the definition of efficacious grace as _efficax ab extrinseco sive per accidens_.
This conception was violently attacked by the Spanish Dominican Bañez and other divines. About 1594, the controversy between the followers of Bañez and the Molinists waxed so hot that Pope Clement VIII appointed a special commission to settle it. This was the famous _Congregatio de Auxiliis_, consisting of picked theologians from both the Dominican and the Jesuit orders. It debated the matter for nine full years without arriving at a decision. Finally Pope Paul V, at the suggestion of St. Francis de Sales, declared both systems to be orthodox and defensible, and strictly forbade the contending parties to denounce each other as heretical.(759)
While Thomism devoted its efforts mainly to the defense of grace, Molinism made it its chief business to champion the dogma of free-will.
1. MOLINISM.—Molinism takes its name from the Jesuit Luis de Molina, who published a famous treatise under the title _Concordia Liberi Arbitrii cum Gratiae Donis_ at Lisbon, in 1588. His teaching may be outlined as follows:
a) In _actu primo_ there is no intrinsic and ontological but merely an extrinsic and accidental distinction between efficacious and sufficient grace, based upon their respective effects. Sufficient grace becomes efficacious by the consent of the will; if the will resists, grace remains inefficacious (_inefficax_) and _merely_ sufficient (_gratia mere sufficiens_). Consequently, one and the same grace may be efficacious in one case and inefficacious in another. It all depends on the will.(760)
b) This theory involves no denial of the priority and superior dignity of grace in the work of salvation. The will, considered as a mere faculty, and _in actu primo_, is raised to the supernatural order by prevenient grace (_gratia praeveniens_), which imparts to it all the moral and physical power necessary to perform free salutary acts. Neither can the _actus secundus_ be regarded as a product of the unaided will; it is the result of grace coöperating with free-will.(761) Consequently, the will by giving its consent does not increase the power of grace, but it is grace which makes possible, prepares, and aids the will in performing free acts. To say that the influence of grace goes farther than this would be to assert that it acts independently of the will, and would thereby deny the freedom of the latter.(762)