, born of a noble family at Cuenca,
entered the Jesuits’ order, 1553, at the age of eighteen,
and taught theology with reputation during twenty years in
the university of Ebora. He died October 12, 1660, at
Madrid, aged sixty-five. His principal works are, Commentaries on the first part of the Summary of St. Thomas,
in Latin, a large treatise “De Justitia et Jure,
” a book on
“The Concordance of Grace and Free-will,
” printed at
Lisbon, 1588, 4to, in Latin, which ought to have at the end
an appendix, printed in 1589. It is an apology from Molina against those who called some propositions in his book
heretical, and this last work was what divided the Dominicans and the Jesuits into Thomists, and Molinists, and
raised the famous disputes about grace and predestination.
Molina’s object was to shew that the operations of divine
grace were entirely consistent with the freedom of human
will; and he introduced a new kind of hypothesis to remove the difficulties attending the doctrines of predestination and liberty, and to reconcile the jarring opinions of
Augustinians, Thomists, Semi- Pelagians, and other contentious divines. Molina affirmed, that the decree of predestination to eternal glory was founded upon a previous
knowledge and consideration of the merits of the elect;
that the grace from whose operation these merits are derived, is not efficacious by its own intrinsic power only,
but also by the consent of our own will, and because it is
administered in those circumstances, in which the Deity,
by that branch of his knowledge which is called scientia
media, foresees that it will be efficacious. The kind of
prescience, denominated in the schools scientia media, is
that foreknowledge of future contingents, that arises from
an acquaintance with the nature and faculties of rational
beings, of the circumstances in which they shall be placed,
of the objects that shall be presented to them, and of the
influence which these circumstances and objects must have
on their actions.