in ecclesiastical history, a sect in the Roman Catholic church, who follow the doctrine and sentiments of the Jesuit Molina, respecting sufficient and efficacious grace. He taught 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 Augustines, Thomists, Semi-Pelagians, and other polemical divines. He 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 the operations of which 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 and contingent events which arises from an acquaintance with the nature and faculties of rational beings, the circumstances in which they shall be placed, the objects which shall be presented to them, and the influence which these circumstances and objects must exert on their actions.