Ronge was excommunicated

but this only increased the general enthusiasm in his favor and when he entered into relations with Czerski, another independent priest who had seceded from the Church, and made along with him an appeal to the lower yrades of the clergy to unite in founding a National German Church independent of the Pope and governed by councils and synods, the appeal received a ready answer from a considerable number of those to whom it was addre ed. A number of congregations belonging to the new body were formed in the more important towns, under the teacher Kote. In the spring of 1845 there were already about 100. At this time (March, 1845), a council was summoned to meet in Leipsic to deliberate on the affairs of the body. Only 20 congregations were represented there, but these proceeded to arrange a system of doctrine and practice. The Bible was recognized as the sole standard of faith, and its interpretation was left to reason, “ penetrated and animated” by the Christian idea. Only two sacraments were admitted, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. In matters of ritual each congregation was left free tc carry into practice its own views. On the subject of purgatory nothing was declared either for or against it. The constitution of the new Church was thus a Protestant one, but in some respects the German Catholics went even further than the majority of Protestants in a liberal direction, inasmuch as they claimed for all, complete religious liberty and declared their religion to be capable of development and modification with the progre of the human mind. The Church established on this basis had at first, great succe . The most eminent men of the liberal party and the deepest thinkers of the time regarded the movement with sympathy. But it was not long before the spirit of opposition began to show itself, The majority of the governments in Germany at the instigation both of the Protestant and the Roman Catholic clergy began to use repre ive mea- ‘sures against the new body. At Baden the adherents of the sect were deprived of their political rights. Austria took the course of banishing them from her dominions. But persecution from without did le hurt than the divisions within the body.