 What is motivating Ockham’s novel suggestion? Even Aquinas admitted that we have an obligation to follow our consciences, whether right or erroneous. When we do not do so, according to Aquinas, we sin. Of course, when our consciences are in a state of voluntary or vincible ignorance we also have a duty to put aside our error, otherwise we sin. It is obviously not possible, however, to put error aside in the case of invincible ignorance since such ignorance is by definition involuntary. Accordingly, for Aquinas, we are obliged to follow such a conscience. Although we act wrongly, in such cases, we are, for Aquinas, excused on the grounds that we could not have known better. To return to Aquinas’s example of inadvertently sleeping with someone who is not your spouse: this might be excusable, for Aquinas, but there is no possibility that such an act might be considered virtuous, much less meritorious. But for Ockham, if it is vicious and therefore punishable not to follow an invincibly erroneous conscience, then merely being excused for following it when we are under a moral obligation to do so would be an insufficient reward. Rather, it should logically follow that it is virtuous and therefore meritorious.