[In Middle English benefice often occurs in the senses of kindness, favour, benefit, a gift, gratuity.] Persons are not now ‘beneficial,’ which word is reserved for things, but ‘beneficent.’
The benefices that God did tham here
Sal tham accuse on sere manere.
Richard Rolle de Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, 5582.
Nowe thanne, Lord, Thou art God, and hast spoke to thy servant so grete benefices.—1 Chron. xvii. 26. Wiclif.
The proper nature of God is always to be helpful and beneficial.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 600.
I wonder
That such a keech can with his very bulk
Take up the rays of the beneficial sun,
And keep it from the earth.