n building up the truth, or of judiciousness
in examining the errors of others, or of faithfulness and dexterity in
the counsels he gave." M'Kenzie, who has inserted a sketch of his career
in his 'Lives of Eminent Scotsmen,' assures us that in the conference of
Naumburg he acquitted himself to the admiration of the whole assembly,
for which he is highly commended by Camerarius in his 'Life of
Melanchthon'; and further, that in the year 1555 the disciples of Andrew
Osiander having raised great dissensions in the city of Nuremberg
respecting the doctrine of justification, Melanchthon made choice of
Alesius as the fittest person to appease them by his wisdom and
learning, and that his management answered Melanchthon's expectations,
though Alesius himself had previously taken a side in the controversy.
In the Majoristic controversy, Alesius, like Melanchthon, so far sided
with Major as to maintain against the extreme Lutherans the necessity of
good works, not to justification, but to final salvation; and in 1560 he
seems to have discussed this question in one of his so-called
_disputationes_.

With respect to his private life, we are told by Thomasius that he had
by his English wife one son, whose name was Caspar, and who died while
still a youth, and had a monument erected by his father to his memory,
bearing the simple inscription, "Caspari. Filiolo. Alexander. Alesius.
Doctor. Lugens. Posuit." He had at least two daughters. One named
Christina, Thomasius tells us, was married to a German bearing the
classical name Marcus Scipio: she outlived her husband, and died in
1604, in the fifty-ninth year of her age. The name of the other daughter
does not seem to have been known to Thomasius, but as he states that she
was given in marriage in 1557, we can have no doubt that she is the same
Anna whose wedding is referred to in a letter of Alesius to
Melanchthon, recently unearthed, and inviting him and other friends in
Wittenberg to the wedding.[318]

[Sidenote: His Death.]

[Sidenote: Deserves a Memorial.]

Alesius himself died on the 17th March 1565, and was buried at Leipsic;
but no stone was raised, or, if raised, now remains, to tell where his
ashes repose. In all probability it was in his son's grave, in the
church of St Paul, in the city of Leipsic, that his ashes were laid to
rest. The only monuments to his memory reared at the time and still
existing are those furnished by our own John Johnston--second master of
St M