The Molinistic theory also has its difficulties, and they are so numerous and weighty that in our treatise on God(738) we made no attempt to demonstrate the _scientia media_ by stringent arguments, but merely accepted it as a working hypothesis which supplies some sort of scientific basis for the dogmas of divine omnipotence and free-will in both the natural and the supernatural order. b) A more serious objection than the one just adverted to is that the Thomistic hypothesis involves the blasphemous inference that God predetermines men to sin. α) Under a rigorous application of the Thomistic principles God would have to be acknowledged as the cause of sin. As the predetermination of the will to justification can take no other form than the _gratia per se efficax_, so sin, considered as an act, necessarily postulates the predetermining influence of the _motor primus_.(739) Without this assumption it would be impossible in the Thomistic system to find in the absolute will of God an infallible medium by which He can foreknow future sins. Bañez says on this point: “God knows sin with an intuitive knowledge, because His will is the cause of the sinful act, as act, at the same time permitting free-will to concur in that act by failing to observe the law.”(740) Though the Thomists refuse to admit that God Himself is the immediate author of sin, the conclusion is inevitable from their premises. And this for two reasons. First, because the alleged _praemotio ad malum_ is as irresistible as the _praemotio ad bonum_; and secondly, because the material element of sin must be inseparable from its formal element; otherwise God would foreknow sin merely _materialiter_ as an act but not _formaliter_ as a sin. The teaching of the Church on this point was clearly defined by the Council of Trent: “If any one saith that it is not in man’s power to make his ways evil, but that the works that are evil God worketh as well as those that are good, not permissibly only, but properly and of Himself, in such wise that the treason of Judas is no less His own proper work than the vocation of Paul; let him be anathema.”(741)