to sentiments of piety, the Sacrament must contribute to a more abundant participation of the graces which it imparts. This heavenly medicine, therefore, in itself at all times salutary, the pastor will be careful to apply, when its efficacy can be aided by the piety and devotion of the sick person. Extreme Unction, then, can be administered only to the sick, and not to per sons in health, although engaged in any thing however dangerous, such as a perilous voyage, or the fatal dangers of battle. It cannot be administered even to persons condemned to death, and already ordered for execution. Its participation is also denied to insane persons, and to children incapable of committing sin, who, therefore, do not require to be purified from its stains, and also to those who labour under the awful visitation of madness, unless they give indications, in their lucid intervals, of a disposition to piety, and express a desire to be anointed. To persons insane from their birth, this Sacrament is not to be administered; but if a sick person, whilst in the possession of his faculties, expressed a wish to receive Extreme Unction, and afterwards becomes delirious, he is to be anointed.
The Sacred Unction is to be applied not to the entire body, but to the organs of sense only to the eyes the organs of sight, to the ears of hearing, to the nostrils of smelling, to the mouth of taste and speech, to the hands of touch. The sense of touch, it is true, is diffused throughout the entire body, yet the hands are its peculiar seat. This manner of administering Extreme Unction is observed throughout the universal Church, and accords with the medicinal nature of this Sacrament. As in corporal disease, although it affects the entire body, yet the cure is applied to that part only which is the seat of the disease, so in spiritual malady, this Sacrament is applied not to the entire body, but to those members which are properly the organs of sense, and also to the loins, which are, as it were, the seat of concupiscence, and to the feet, by which we move from one place to another.
Here it is to be observed, that, during the same illness, and whilst the danger of dying continues the same, the sick person is to be anointed but once; should he, however, recover after he has been anointed, he may receive the aid of this Sacrament, as often as he shall have relapsed into the same danger. This Sacrament, therefore, is evidently to be numbered amongst those which may be repeated.
But as every obstacle which may impede its efficacy should be removed with the greatest care, and as nothing is more opposed to it than a state of mortal guilt, the pastor will follow the uniform practice of the Catholic Church, and not administer Extreme Unction, until the penitent has confessed and received. He will then earnestly exhort the sick person, to receive this Sacrament with the same sentiments of faith which animated the primitive Christians, who presented themselves to the Apostles to be healed by them. The health of the soul is to be the first object of the sick man's prayers, the second, that of the
