The queen of Hungary, governess of the Netherlands, who, from a strange mixture of contradictory qualities, was desirous, while obliged to execute the persecuting decrees of her brother against evangelical Christianity, to feed upon the word of God, had chosen for her chaplain one Peter Alexander, a true Christian man. This minister faithfully confessed his trust in the Saviour, both in preaching and in conversation. 'All things needful for salvation,' he said, 'are contained in the Gospel. We must believe only that which is to be found in the Holy Scriptures. Faith alone justifies immediately before God, but works justify a man before his fellow-men. The true indulgences are obtained without gold or silver, by trust alone in the merits of Christ. The one real sin which condemns is not to believe in Christ. The true penance consists in abstinence from sin. All the merits of Christ are communicated to men by faith, so that they are able to glory in them as much as if they were their own. We must honor the saints only by imitating their virtues. We obtain a blessing of God more easily by asking for it ourselves than through the saints.[155] No one loves God so much as he ought. All the efforts and all the labors of those who are not regenerated by the Holy Spirit are evil. The religion of the monks is hypocrisy. The fast of God is a perpetual fast, and not confined to this or that particular day. It is three hundred years since the pure and real Gospel was preached; and now whoever preaches it is considered a heretic.' [Sidenote: THE QUEEN'S CHAPLAIN.] It was a strange sight, this evangelical chaplain preaching in the chapel of the most persecuting court in Christendom. Alexander, too, after being frequently accused, was at length obliged to hold a theological disputation with the confessor De Soto, in the presence of the two Granvellas. In consequence of this disputation proceedings were instituted against him. The confessor often came before the emperor and declared that the whole country would be ruined if this man were not severely punished. One day a friend of Enzinas came to see him in prison, and told him that the queen's preacher had fled, because he found that if he stayed an hour longer he would be ruined. Alexander was tried and burnt in effigy, together with his Latin and French books. As for himself, he became first a professor at the university of Heidelberg, afterwards canon of Canterbury cathedral, and finally pastor of the French church in London.