Sect. 45.--Now, besides this literal and positive kind
of death, there are others whereof divines make men-
tion, and those, I think, not merely metaphorical, as
mortification, dying unto sin and the world. There-
fore, I say, every man hath a double horoscope; one of
his humanity,--his birth, another of his Christianity,--
his baptism: and from this do I compute or calculate
my nativity; not reckoning those horae combustae,<64> and
odd days, or esteeming myself anything, before I was
my Saviour's and enrolled in the register of Christ.
Whosoever enjoys not this life, I count him but an
apparition, though he wear about him the sensible
affections of flesh. In these moral acceptions, the way
to be immortal is to die daily; nor can I think I have
the true theory of death, when I contemplate a skull or
behold a skeleton with those vulgar imaginations it
casts upon us. I have therefore enlarged that common
memento mori into a more Christian memorandum,
memento quatuor novissima,--those four inevitable
points of us all, death, judgment, heaven, and hell.
Neither did the contemplations of the heathens rest in
their graves, without a further thought, of Rhada-
manth<65> or some judicial proceeding after death, though
in another way, and upon suggestion of their natural
reasons. I cannot but marvel from what sibyl or oracle
they stole the prophecy of the world's destruction by
fire, or whence Lucan learned to say--