Yet the “Doctor of Grace” expressly teaches: “God is good, God is just. He can deliver some without merits because He is good; but He cannot damn any one without demerits, because He is just.”(664) St. Prosper re-echoes this teaching when he says of the reprobates: “Of their own will they went out; of their own will they fell; and because their fall was foreknown, they were not predestined. They would, however, be predestined if they were to return and persevere in holiness; hence God’s predestination is for many the cause of perseverance, for none the cause of falling away.”(665) St. Fulgentius expresses himself in similar language.(666) 2. THE THEORY OF “NEGATIVE REPROBATION.”—Negative reprobation is defined by its defenders as an eternal decree by which God excludes from Heaven those not absolutely predestined, in other words, determines not to save them. a) Gonet explains the difference between negative and positive reprobation in Scholastic terminology as follows: “_... quod haec [i.e. positiva] habet non solum terminum a quo, nempe exclusionem a gloria, sed etiam terminum ad quem, scil. poenam sive damni sive sensus; illa vero [i.e. negativa] solum habet terminum a quo, nempe exclusionem a gloria ut beneficio indebito, non vero terminum ad quem, quia ex vi exclusionis ut sic praecise et ut habet rationem purae negationis, non intelligitur reprobus esse damnandus aut ulli poenae sive damni sive sensus deputandus._”(667) The general principle laid down in this quotation is variously developed by Thomist theologians. The rigorists (Alvarez, John a S. Thoma, Estius, Sylvius) assign as the motive of reprobation the sovereign will of God. God, they say, without taking into account possible sins and demerits, determined _a priori_ to exclude from Heaven those who are not predestined. De Lemos, Gotti, Gonet, Gazzaniga, and others condemn this view as incompatible with the teaching of St. Thomas, and, appealing to St. Augustine’s doctrine of the _massa damnata_, find the ultimate reason for the exclusion of the reprobates from heaven in original sin, in which God, without being unjust, could leave as many as He saw fit. Goudin, Graveson, Billuart, and others assume that the reprobates are not directly excluded from eternal glory but merely from “effective election” thereunto, God simply having decreed _ante praevisa merita_ to leave them to their weakness.(668) While the Thomists found no difficulty in harmonizing this view with their theory of physical premotion, the few Molinists who espoused it were hard put in trying to square it with the _scientia media_.(669) On the whole these Molinists endorse the third and mildest of the above-quoted opinions, which differs only theoretically from the rigoristic view described in the first place. Practically it makes no difference whether God directly excludes a man from heaven or refuses to give him the graces necessary to attain it.