The Romans sometimes compelled a captive to be joined face-to-face with a dead body, and to bear it about until the horrible effluvia destroyed the life of the living victim. Virgil describes this cruel punishment:

The living and the dead at his command
Were coupled face to face, and hand to hand;
Till choked with stench, in loathed embraces tied,
The lingering wretches pined away and died.

Without Christ, we are shackled to the dead corpse of our sinfulness. Only repentance frees us from certain death, for life and death cannot coexist indefinitely.