# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1858_S195
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Martin Chemnitz on Extreme Unction. 195

...doctrine and rule of James applicable, and indeed to be held as
necessary. But because it is evident and notorious that this gift has
now ceased in the church, the question arises whether its outward
symbol — with which the thing itself, namely the restoration of health
by a miracle, is no longer connected — is to be retained and used in
the church, in such a way that it is transferred to an action of a
different kind, for a different purpose and use. By what command, on
what promise, is that anointing — with which the gift of healing is now
no longer connected — transferred to a different purpose and use? For
the command and the promise which that anointing had refer, both
according to James and according to Mark, to the gift of healing. It is
the same as if one wished now to administer to the dying the anointing
of priests and kings with oil, which in the Old Testament had command
and promise! The extreme unction of the papists, because it is used for
something else after the extinguishing of the gift of healing, has
neither command nor promise, nor even any example, whether in Mark or
in James. And because faith is not without a promise, there can be no
prayer of faith connected with it. With the ceasing of the thing
itself, namely the gift of healing, its outward symbol — namely the
anointing with oil — naturally ceases as well. What belongs to the
effects of the word, however, remains present in the sicknesses of
Christians: the recognition of sin, prayer, the forgiveness of sins —
none of which is now, by any command of God, bound to anointing, now
that the gift of healing has ceased; indeed, even the gift of healing
itself was not bound to the anointing even then, as all the examples of
healings in the Acts of the Apostles testify, of none of which one
reads that anointing with oil was used in connection with it.

If, however, it is objected that the office of the apostles was neither
an office of healing the sick nor a bodily one, but a spiritual one,
and that therefore that anointing did not refer merely to the gift of
healing, I answer: outward or bodily miracles were used precisely for
this reason, that through them the doctrine of Christ's spiritual
benefits might be confirmed, and the one healed might be pointed
upward, and be led to recognize, to desire, to seek, and to lay hold of
the spiritual and eternal goods offered in the Gospel. Yet outward
miracles were performed on many who did not receive Christ's spiritual
benefits, just as, on the other hand, many on whose bodies no sign
occurred obtained the grace of God through faith in the word of the
Gospel. For the outward miracles were not the instrument by which
spiritual goods are offered and appropriated; they only prepared the
way for the Gospel, which is the office of the Spirit, in which faith
seeks and receives grace, forgiveness, etc.

The apostles, then, in the gift of healing, used the outward