# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1858_S167
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Martin Chemnitz on Extreme Unction. 167

...promise, and there is no doubt that the Son of God accompanies them
with his working, that they may be a power of God unto salvation to all
who believe.

But one says: What if Christ, who better than we knows how to judge the
extreme dangers of our souls in the death-struggle, had wished to
institute, besides those already-named means, a special sacrament, in
order thereby, as by the surest of all helps, to guard the end of our
life firmly and effectually against the assaults of Satan, which are
then usually more violent, and against the terrors of death? I answer:
if the Son of God, our physician, had judged this to be useful and
necessary, he would without doubt have instituted a special sacrament
for the dying; for whom he loves, he loves unto the end. John 13:1. And
if it were plain from the word of God that Christ had instituted such a
sacrament, with a definite prescription of its form, with the explicit
giving of a command, and with the addition of a special promise, to be
administered generally to all believers, until the end of the world, in
the hour of death: then obedience of faith would indeed require that
one accept and use it with believing reverence.

The papists, indeed, also maintain that extreme unction is such a
sacrament. The Tridentine decree says that the anointing of the sick
was instituted as a true and proper sacrament of the New Testament by
Christ our Lord, in Mark chapter 6:12-13. We have, then, the seat of
this dispute in Scripture, and it will now not be difficult to
determine whether that extreme unction, as it is described and used by
the papists, was instituted by Christ as a sacrament of the New
Testament. For the institution of a testament requires that, by a word
of God given in the manner of a command and a promise, the matter, the
form, the act, and the power of the sacrament be prescribed, and indeed
in such a way that it is not something either personal or temporary,
but that the command to do this, and the promise of its efficacy,
concern the whole church of the New Testament, of all times, until the
end of the world, until Christ comes to judgment; for such is the
nature of baptism and the Supper of the Lord. Circumcision, indeed, had
God's command and promise, but these do not concern us. The apostles
had the command to lay hands on the sick, and the promise that it would
then go better with them. Mark 16:18. Christ put clay on the eyes of
the blind. John 9:6. Paul lay upon the dead man. Acts 20:10. His
handkerchiefs were laid upon the sick, Acts 19:12, and so forth. But
these are personal and temporary matters, and without a special and
pertinent word may not be used as a pattern for imitation.

The passage, then, on which the sacrament of extreme unction is groun-