on to our considering the subject of anointing with
oil as purely mental healing, but according to the instructions given
for its use there was scarcely enough oil employed to be of benefit
otherwise, and especially as food. Mental healing, then, is the
rationale of the cures.

Puller[60] gives us three of the earliest incidents of healing by
unction, the original accounts all being written by contemporaries and
friends. Some time between the years 335 and 355, St. Parthenius,
Bishop of Lampsacus, anointed a man who was described as "altogether
withered." The account says: "Then getting up, he gently and gradually
softened the man's body with the holy oil, and straightway made him to
rise up healed." Refinus, a well-known writer and an eye-witness to
this healing, tells of St. Macarius of Alexandria and four monks
restoring, about the year 375, "a man, withered in all his limbs and
especially in his feet." He says: "But when he had been anointed all
over by them with oil in the Name of the Lord, immediately the soles
of his feet were strengthened. And when they said to him, 'In the name
of Jesus Christ ... arise, and stand on thy feet, and return to thy
house,' immediately arising and leaping, he blessed God." Some years
later, Palladius, the friend of St. Chrysostom, writes of another of
St. Macarius's cures which he witnessed: "But at the time that we were
there, there was brought to him from Thessalonica a noble and wealthy
virgin, who during many years had been suffering from paralysis. And
when she had been presented to him, and had been thrown down before
the cell of the blessed man, he, being moved with compassion for her,
with his own hands anointed her during twenty days with holy oil,
pouring out prayers for her to the Lord, and so sent her back cured to
her own city."

The Sacramentary of Serapion, Bishop of Thmuis, Egypt, written about
350, provides for the consecration of bread and water, as well as oil,
for healing; and in a prayer concerning oil and water there contained,
the following words are used: "Grant healing power upon these
creatures, that every fever and every demon and every sickness may
depart through the drinking and the anointing, and that the partaking
of these creatures may be a healing medicine and a medicine of
complete soundness in the Name of the Only begotten, Jesus Christ,"
etc. The Apostolic Constitutions of about 375 contain a prayer of
consecration used over oil and water brough