The source of blessedness is not without us but within....
Here " on its beginning " is set over antithetically against " to torment," whereas the context requires " to its blessedness."
The Bible legend tells us that the absence of labor--idleness--was a condition of the first man's blessedness before the Fall.
To all who felt this need Christianity offered high moral ideals, and a tremendous moral enthusiasm, in its devotion to a beloved leader, in its emphasis upon the ethical possibilities of the meanest, and in its faith in a future life of blessedness for the righteous.
Thus the fundamental ideas of a middle state after death and of a purification preparatory to perfect blessedness are met with in Zoroaster, who takes souls through twelve stages before they are sufficiently purified to enter heaven; and the Stoics conceived of a middle place of enlightenment which they called Eµirtpw ns.