[466] The strongly Platonic tinge of this language is perhaps best preserved in a bare literal translation.
[467] Vives remarks that the ancients defined blessedness as an absolutely perfect state in all good, peculiar to God. Perhaps Augustine had a reminiscence of the remarkable discussion in the Tusc. Disp. lib. v., and the definition "Neque ulla alia huic verbo, quum beatum dicimus, subjecta notio est, nisi, secretis malis omnibus, cumulata bonorum complexio."
[468] With this chapter compare the books De Dono Persever. and De Correp. et Gratia.
[469] Matt. xxv. 46.
[470] John viii. 44.
[471] 1 John iii. 8.
[472] Cf. Gen. ad Lit. xi. 27 et seqq.
[473] Ps. xvii. 6.
[474] 1 John iii. 8.
[475] The Manichæans.