Head, members, principal and accessories

Meaning

II.4.10 compares the principal subject and its accessories with a head and its members. The distinction assigns different degrees of the promised preservation: an accessory receives some duration, whereas the principal approaches perpetuity. The head is not simply interchangeable with every member, and neither phrase states categorical immortality. The reasoning is from lesser to greater: if mortification must be observed in the members and gives accessory lives some duration, how much more exactly must it apply to the head and bring the principal’s life nearer perpetuity? The questions express an inference, not merely a list of differently lasting parts.

The comparison accompanies mortification and renewal, and the Christ-grain image supplies an analogy of restored life. The source's limiting words remain indispensable. Some duration is not endless duration; approaching perpetuity is not already possessing it. Book III's explicit denial of bodily immortality confirms that the superlative language here must be read as graded and aspirational rather than as a guarantee that a treated human body cannot die.