There were in his own family more faithful witnesses to the truth. His sister, the wife of the elector of Brandenburg, was devoted to the Gospel, and being persecuted by her husband was compelled to take refuge in Saxony. Christian’s wife, Queen Isabella, herself a sister of Charles the Fifth, having gone to Nürnberg for the purpose of asking in behalf of her husband the assistance of her brother Ferdinand, received in that town the communion at the hands of the evangelical Osiander. When the archduke heard of it, he said to her very angrily that he no longer owned her as his sister. ‘Even if you disown me,’ bravely replied the sister of Charles the Fifth, ‘I will not on that account disown the Word of God.’ This princess died in the following year (1526), in the Netherlands, professing to the last a purely evangelical faith.[243] She partook of the body and the blood of Christ, according to the institution of the Saviour, although the grandees who were about her put forth all their efforts to get her to accept the rites of the papacy. This Christian decision of character in a sister of the emperor, in a country in which the papal system in its strictest shape prevailed, greatly troubled her connections and appeared to them a monstrous thing. The imperial family could not possibly allow it to be thought that one of its members had died a heretic. When the queen had lost all consciousness, a priest by order of his superiors approached her and administered to her extreme unction, just as he might have done to a corpse. Every body understood that this proceeding, so grave in appearance, was a mere piece of mimicry. The faith of the dying queen was everywhere known and gladdened the friends of the Gospel. ‘Christ,’ said Luther, ‘wished for once to have a queen in heaven.’[244] Isabella was not the last. Nevertheless, the triumph of the prelatical and aristocratic party in Denmark seemed to ensure the final ruin of the evangelical cause. No one doubted that the abuses of the papacy and of feudalism would be confirmed for the future. But there is a power which watches over the destinies of the Christian religion, and which when this appears to be buried in the depth of the abysses brings it forth again with glory. God lifts up what men cast down. Footnote 214: ‘Quanquam nee parentum rusticorum quippe conditio, nec rei familiaris inopia permitterent ut ad literarum studia applicaret animum.’—Gerdesius, _Annales Reformationis_, iii. p. 355. Footnote 215: ‘In studia propensionem ab infantia vehementem.’—_Ibid._ Footnote 216: Bröndlund, _Memoria J. Tausani_. Munter, _Kirchengeschichte von Dänemark_, i. p. 73. Footnote 217: ‘Adiret universitatem excepta sola atque unica Witebergensi.’—Gerdesius, _Annal. Reform_, iii. p. 356. Munter, iii. p. 74. Footnote 218: ‘Nugarum et ineptiarum.’—_Ibid._ Footnote 219: Gerdesius, _Annales Reformationis_, iii. p. 356. Munter, iii. p. 74. Footnote 220: