Part 51

Ps. xlviii. 1.

Ps. xlvi. 4.

Homine assumto, non Deo consumto.

Quo itur Deus, qua itur homo.

A clause is here inserted to give the etymology of præsentia from præ vensibus.

Another derivation, sententia from sensus, the inward perception of the mind.

Gen. i. 1.

Prov. viii. 27.

Matt. xviii. 10.

A common question among the Epicureans; urged by Velleius in Cic. De Nat. Deor. i. 9; adopted by the Manichæans and spoken to by Augustine in the Conf. xi. 10, 12, also in De Gen. contra Man. i. 3.

The Neo-Platonists.

Number begins at one, but runs on infinitely.

Gal. iv. 26.

1 Thess. v. 5.

Comp. de Gen. ad lit. i. and iv.

Ver. 35.

Ps. cxlviii. 1-5.

Job xxxviii. 7.

Vives here notes that the Greek theologians and Jerome held, with Plato, that spiritual creatures were made first, and used by God in the creation of things material. The Latin theologians and Basil held that God made all things at once.

John i. 9.

Mali enim nulla natura est: sed amissio boni, mali nomen accepit.

Plutarch (De Plac. Phil. i. 3, and iv. 3) tells us that this opinion was held by Anaximenes of Miletus, the followers of Anaxagoras, and many of the Stoics. Diogenes the Cynic, as well as Diogenes of Apollonia, seems to have adopted the same opinion. See Zeller's Stoics, pp. 121 and 199.

"Ubi lux non est, tenebræ sunt, non quia aliquid sunt tenebræ, sed ipsa lucis absentia tenebræ dicuntur."--Aug. De Gen. contra Man. 7.

Wisdom vii. 22.

The strongly Platonic tinge of this language is perhaps best preserved in a bare literal translation.

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."

With this chapter compare the books De Dono Persever. and De Correp. et Gratia.

Matt. xxv. 46.