# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1858_S169
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Martin Chemnitz on Extreme Unction. 169

that outward symbol of the gift of making well may have been general; yet Christ, after the resurrection, Mark 16:18, does not say: they shall anoint the sick, and so shall they be made well; but rather: "Upon the sick shall they lay hands, so it shall go better with them." The anointing with oil was therefore not, at the time of the apostles, a universal, necessary symbol of healing; rather Mark reports, concerning the first sending out of the apostles, when they were sent alone into the Jewish land — in which much was temporary and personal — only a fact pertaining to the twelve apostles, namely with what outward symbol they exercised the gift of making well. But in chapter 16:18, where they are commanded to go out into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature, Christ speaks not only of the apostles but also of those who would come to believe, when he says: "Upon the sick shall they lay hands," etc. Why then do we not rather make of the laying on of hands — which has a word of Christ pertaining not only to the apostles but also to believers — a universal sacrament for the sick? The answer lies close at hand. Because he is speaking of a sign, that is, of miraculous gifts, which were temporary. And yet even then, when the miraculous gift was in full vigor, the apostles did not apply the laying on of hands universally, nor always necessarily, in bestowing the gift of making well! Rather, then, this same answer will hold for the anointing with oil, of which we read that at the first and particular sending out of the apostles it was not so much expressly commanded by Christ, as only that it was undertaken by the apostles.

Thirdly, the Evangelist says nothing, either of a command of Christ that the oil for that anointing should first be exorcised and consecrated with fixed words, or that the apostles did any such thing.

Fourthly, one does not read that the apostles anointed those of whom they supposed, with probability, that they would soon die; but rather they healed the sick through their anointing, so that they would not die of that sickness at that time.

Fifthly, of any use of that form of words which the papists prescribe, one reads not a single letter in the evangelical history.

Sixthly, one also reads nothing of any command of Christ to anoint the five organs of sense, nor that the apostles did any such thing.

Seventhly, Mark does not say that the purpose and effect of that anointing was that sin should thereby be blotted out and the assaults of the devil upon the dying driven back, etc.; but rather that through the outward symbol the gift of bodily healing was exercised. It is therefore altogether evident, from this plain contrast, that Christ, Mark 6:13, neither instituted nor indicated (as the Tri-