# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1858_S165
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Martin Chemnitz on Extreme Unction. 165

...day withstand, and accomplish all things well, Eph. 6:13, and give
thanks to God, who gives us the victory over death and its sting, 1 Cor.
15:57.

Over these two points there is no dispute, for we confess both with full
mouth. Rather the question is what those helps, or rather remedies, are.
For in order that these be effective against death and its sting, it is
necessary that they not be devised or conjectured by men, but instituted
and prepared by the Son of God Himself, who is our true physician, and
indeed with a promise attached concerning their power and efficacy. It is
in the very workshop of the medicines of the soul — as Basil so
beautifully and truly calls Holy Scripture — that those remedies and
counter-remedies must be sought which are powerful unto life in the very
midst of death. But that division which the Tridentine decree seems to
lay as its foundation is false: namely, that Christ prepared some means
of salvation for the living, and others for the dying; as though those
means by which he imparts grace to us and keeps us in it, while we are
well and healthy in this world, were no longer valid or no longer
sufficient once we have reached the end of life and must now pass through
death to another life, but as though one then had to look about for other
helps. Christ, who is the resurrection and the life, indeed the death of
death and an antidote against death, as Irenaeus says, speaks of the word
of the Gospel, through which that life is offered and imparted to us, and
of faith, through which Christ, our life, is grasped and received in the
word, in such a way that the power and efficacy of the Gospel and of
faith is powerful unto salvation not only while we live here, but he
explicitly includes also the hour of death, the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. John 5:24-25, 6:50-51, 11:25, etc.
Everywhere you hear that neither another word nor another faith is set
before the dying than before the living, but he assures us that that
word, which we grasp by faith while we live, has and exercises power unto
life precisely in death; indeed, for this very reason we grasp that word
in faith while we live, so that in the hour of death, by its power, we
may pass through death into life. For if in this life only we have hope
in Christ, we are of all men most miserable, 1 Cor. 15:19. Hence Paul is
accustomed in his epistles to pray that believers may be kept and
strengthened, in what they have grasped in this life, until the day of
Christ, 1 Cor. 1:8, and Phil. 1:6, Eph. 4:30, Heb. 3:14, Rev. 2:10, 25,
1 Cor. 3:22, Rom. 8:33.

In death, therefore, no other means of salvation are to be sought than
those which, while we live, are offered to faith for acceptance in the
word. For the one true and sufficient remedy against the