ALES, ALEXANDER, a celebrated divine of the rigid school of Augsburg, was born at Edinburgh on the 23d April 1500. He soon made considerable progress in school divinity, and entered the lists very early against Luther, this being then the grand field wherein all authors, young and old, used to display their abilities. Soon after he had a share in the dispute which Patrick Hamilton maintained against the ecclesiastics, in favour of the new faith he had imbibed at Marburg. He endeavoured to bring him back to the Catholic religion; but this he could not effect, and even began him-
self to doubt about his own religion, being much affected by the discourse of Hamilton, and still more by the constancy he showed at the stake. Beginning thus to waver, he was himself persecuted with so much violence, that he was obliged to retire into Germany, where he became at length a perfect convert to the Protestant religion. The change of religion in England after the marriage of Henry VIII. with Anne Boleyn, induced Ales to go to London in 1535. He was highly esteemed by Cranmer, Latimer, and Thomas Cromwell, who were at that time in high favour with the king. Upon the fall of these favourites he was obliged to return to Germany, where the elector of Brandenburg appointed him professor of divinity at Frankfort on the Oder in 1540. Having offended the court of Brandenburg by publicly maintaining the right and duty of the civil magistrate to punish fornication, he underwent a public rebuke from the University of Wittenberg. He left Frankfort in disgust, and returned to Leipzig, where he was chosen professor of divinity, and died in March 1565. He wrote various commentaries on the Scriptures, besides many controversial works against the Roman Catholics.