Ib.
First, because every offence against God may justly be punished by him in the strictness of his righteous judgments with eternal death, yea, with annihilation; which appeareth to be most true, for that there is no punishment so evil, and so much to be avoided, as the least sin that may be imagined. So that a man should rather choose eternal death, yea, utter annihilation, than commit the least offence in the world.
I admit this to be Scriptural; but what is wanted is, clearly to state the difference between eternal death and annihilation. For who would not prefer the latter, if the former mean everlasting misery?
Ib
. c. 41. p. 62.
But he will say, Cyprian calleth the Roman Church the principal Church whence sacerdotal unity hath her spring; hereunto we answer, that the Roman Church, not in power of overruling all, but in order is the first and principal; and that therefore while she continueth to hold the truth, and encroacheth not upon the right of other Churches, she is to have the priority; but that in either of these cases she may be forsaken without breach of that unity, which is essentially required in the parts of the Church.
This is too large a concession. The real ground of the priority of the Roman see was that Rome, for the first three or perhaps four centuries, was the metropolis of the Christian world. Afterwards for the very same reason the Patriarch of New Rome or Constantinople claimed it; and never ceased to assert at least a co-equality. Had the Apostolic foundation been the cause, Jerusalem and Antioch must have had priority; not to add that the Roman Church was not founded by either Paul or Peter as is evident from the epistle to the Romans.
Append. B. III. p. 205. I do not think the attack on Transubstantiation the most successful point of the orthodox Protestant controversialists. The question is, what is meant in Scripture, as in
John
vi. by Christ's body or flesh and blood. Surely not the visible, tangible, accidental body, that is, a cycle of images and sensations in the imagination of the beholders; but his supersensual body, the