If the Christians anointed pagans it is legitimate to suppose that they also anointed fellow-Christians, and that if this was performed without special mention about the end of the second century, it must have been common from the time of James to that period. It is probable that during the first seven centuries of our era the practice of praying with the sick and anointing them with oil never ceased. There may be some objection 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."