# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1858_S161
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lehre und Wehre.

Volume IV.    June 1858.    No. 6.

Martin Chemnitz on Extreme Unction. *)

The editors of the Correspondence Sheet, Mr. Inspector Bauer in Neuendettelsau and Mr. Pastor Stirner in Fürth in Bavaria, declare regarding Mr. Pastor Löhe and his performance of the anointing: "The one who acted was conscious not merely of not acting in an un-Lutheran way, but rather, in closest adherence of obedience to an apostolic ordinance, from which he cannot convince himself that it, as most Protestant interpreters hold, belonged only to the apostolic age and for as long as the miraculous gifts of healing the sick lasted, but has become antiquated for our time. Such an interpretation, set against the plain words, which need no interpretation, appears only too much like an evasion (!), meant to justify the disregard of the apostolic ordinance in practice. The whole impression of the passage is that a lasting institution was thereby meant to be established in the congregation, and that the office-prayer, with its blessing, was to be commended, and set in its proper light, also as a remedy for bodily distress."

This brazen, public invective of professed Lutherans against all Lutheran theologians, as over against the Papists, does not, we believe, make any justification of our theologians necessary; but since, precisely in the criticism of the Papist doctrine of extreme unction, as given by the latter, the principles are at the same time developed which shed light on the whole system of tradition of the Roman church, we hope to act in the sense of our readers if we take occasion, from the vexatious affair of the anointing in Bavaria, to communicate here, in German translation, what is most important for our time from the critique of the decrees of the Tridentine Council concerning extreme unction, as given by Martin Chemnitz in his "Examen Concilii Tridentini."

Chemnitz places before his critique the words of the Tridentine Council treating of extreme unction. These read as follows:

*) Compare on this the article "Extreme Unction," in the March issue of "Lehre und Wehre" of this year. Pages 90-94.