# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1858_S168
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

168 Martin Chemnitz on Extreme Unction.

...ded, is found at Mark 6:12-13, and reads thus: ""And they went out,
and preached that men should repent. And they cast out many devils, and
anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them."" With this
passage we wish to compare, point by point, the description of the
papal unction; for thus what is in question will become manifest. For
it is a very great matter to set forth and hold something as a
sacrament of the New Testament, especially in the last extremities, so
that one then departs from the word and the other sacraments and places
the last help at the end of life in extreme unction.

First, then, let us see whether the apostles administered that anointing
to the dying to this end, that thereby, as by the surest of all helps,
the end of life might be guarded against sin, the devil, and death. But
of what kind that anointing of the apostles was, of which Mark writes,
appears with certainty from the description of the evangelists. Matthew
chapter 10:1 says: ""He gave them power ... to heal all manner of
sickness and all manner of disease."" Luke 9:1 says: ""He gave them
power and authority ... to cure diseases."" Mark himself also says:
""He gave them power ... to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils.""
And in Mark 6:13 nothing else is described than how the apostles
accomplished this at their first sending forth, namely that they healed
the sick by the use of the outward symbol, the anointing with oil. Mark,
therefore, does not at all say in that passage that the apostles
anointed those who lay in their last throes, in the belief that in this
anointing they had the last and surest help against sin, the devil, and
death; still less does he prescribe that such anointing with oil should
take place and be maintained throughout the whole church of the New
Testament, at all times, until the end of the world; rather he
describes the gift of healing, of which, as of other miraculous gifts,
it is evident that it was temporary and ceased once the Gospel had
spread throughout the whole world.

In the second place, Mark also does not say, concerning that gift of
healing, that Christ prescribed to the apostles by his command that
they were necessarily to use the matter of oil in all healings of the
sick; rather he says only this, that Christ gave them power and
authority to heal the sick, but that they themselves applied the
outward symbol of anointing with oil. But the history of the Acts of
the Apostles testifies that they did not always employ the same
outward symbols in their actions; for one reads that they used at times
the word alone, at times the laying on of hands, at times touch, the
shadow, handkerchiefs, and aprons, for the healing of the sick. Neither
do I think it is Mark's meaning that the apostles, at that first
sending forth, healed no one except those whom they anointed with oil;
for he says: ""They anointed many that were sick with oil."" And even
if it were indeed true that in that first