While its Princes are feasting, Germany is undergoing revolu- tion
in religion, and the progress of reformation has assumed the shape of popular tumult. These disorders are perpetrated in the name of John Ronge, the head of a new dissenting sect who have seceded from the Roman Catholic Church. Ronge was dis- gusted, in early life, with the strict discipline of his ecclesiastical school: subsequently corresponding with a newspaper, he at- tacked the ultramontane doctrines of his provincial superior, the Vicar-General of Breslau; and was dismissed from his cure. He was now driven into open contumacy as a proscribed man. In October last, he wrote a letter to the Archbishop Arnoldi of Treves, denouncing as an imposture a relic exhibited in Treves Cathedral as the coat which Jesus wore when he suffered cruci- fixion: his writings made a noise ; he gained followers; and a new sect has grown up, protesting against the abuses of the Roman Catholic Church and the celibacy of the clergy. By sheer dint of numbers, the sect has made itself recognized ; and it now comprises the populace of many towns. It is growing bold in its numerical strength. At Halberstadt, the other silty, the modern Luther, preaching in the open air, announced the ap- proaching downfall of the Roman Church ; an outraged Roman Catholic prophesied the earlier downfall of the heretic, and sought to give instant effect to his prophecy by knocking M. Ronge on the head with a stick ; the zealot was in turn assailed, and there was a tumult. At Leipzig, Prince John of Saxony went to review some troops : he is an opponent of the new sect; and the populace, being among the num- ber of the enlightened, took advantage of the occasion to enter into a controversy with the Prince,—throwinr,o. out their arguments. in the shape of blues and stones. The Prince replied with a volley of musketry; a refutation that told with fatal effect on innocent as well as culpable : so that the Prince, hav- ing as it were proved too much, by evincing cruelty as well as zea- lotry, was forced to retreat from his position ; and he left the town amid the execration of its inhabitants, having on the whole failed in his practical polemics. The schism in Germany, there- fore, has reached the fighting stage ; and Rome will have to buy peace with a loss of domain.
