Rongé-His Treatment by Friends and Enemies-Dr. Theiner— Meetings of the Romish Clergy-Resolutions-Attempt to injure Czerski-Ordinance of the King of Prussia respecting the Free Church-One of its Ministers fined for solemnizing a Marriage.

JULY 8. All is quiet in the reformed camp. The monthly Journal of the Catholic Church Reform, published in Berlin. by A. Müller, conjointly with Rongé and Czerski, continues to hold the language of orthodox Christianity; and there are not wanting persons who hope, from Rongé's upright, candid, and unprejudiced character, that the spirit as well as the letter of Scripture will yet find entrance to his mind, and then assuredly he will fearlessly preach whatever he honestly believes. He has recently had a specimen of the extremes of human adulation and hatred during a visit to his native place, Bishopswalde. In the neighbouring town of Neisse, which he and his friends entered at two o'clock on Sunday morning, for the purpose of constituting German Catholic Church, the news of his arrival spread so rapidly, that a crowd assembled before his windows as early as five o'clock. At ten, Rongé drove to the place of meeting, where ninety-three families enrolled

themselves as members. During Rongé's sermon, the Roman Catholic congregations being likewise assembled, the officiating priest availed himself of the opportunity to denounce the reformer and his errand from the altar. The effect manifested itself plainly enough, when both congregations, being dismissed nearly at the same time, met in the street; but the popular discontent was held in check, by the presence of the military then assembling for parade; and thus Rongé, whom the Roman Catholic gymnasium. scholars saluted with an enthusiastic "Viva," reached his dwelling unmolested, though his friends were edified by hearing, on all sides, kind wishes for his and their elevation to the honours of the gallows and the wheel. Rongé's brothers and sisters had, on this occasion, given in their adherence to the new church, and accompained him in the evening to Bishopswalde; but not without danger, for showers of large stones assailed the carriages, by one of which the postillion was severely wounded on the cheek, and, although the carriages were closed (as tightly as foreign vehicles can be), they were afterwards found to contain several ponderous missiles. Rongé's reception at his native place was cordial; a report had preceded him that his hands had been cut off in Neisse, and so he was obliged to afford ocular demonstration of possessing both, by shaking hands, right and left, with old and young, in the village.

On returning the following morning to Neisse, he found the aspect of affairs totally altered. Three officers awaited his arrival to invite him, in the name of their regiment, to a dinner; and when, at the termination of a handsome and extremely courteous entertainment, a carriage came to the door, to convey the reformer to Walddorf, the country seat of Count Reichenbach (the kind patron with whom Rongé spent the interval which elapsed between his suspension and final abjuration of the Roman church), the general commandant conducted him to the vehicle, where the gymnasiumists waited to greet him with a second "Viva!" and to whom he addressed a few words of cordial acknowledgment. The

whole route to Walddorf being guarded by a succession of sentinels, no evil could occur to the travellers; and, after spending a couple of hours with the count and a numerous company he had assembled for the occasion, Rongé and his friends drove onward to Grottkau, where he formerly officiated as priest. The young ladies, and the children of the town, formerly his scholars, met him before the gates, and the whole population seemed to have assembled before the posthouse to receive him, Rongé proceeded at once to the house of the Lutheran clergyman, and the whole host of hurrahing young people followed in his train. His more immediate scholars had assumed the right to rank themselves around the carriage, and, as he stepped out, each pressed forward to shake him by the hand. Spending a happy quarter of an hour among these attached young hearts, he again drove off, and found the fanatical portion of the populace waiting his appearance without the gates, to salute him with stones and mud, so that he might bear off with him characteristic testimonials of the various classes in Grottkau. Whatever we may think of Ronge's doctrinal defects, it is impossible to doubt such unequivocal evidence of his moral qualifications. But, perhaps, for the desirable progress of the Catholic reform movement, the most hopeful occurrence which I have to relate is, the decision of Dr. Theiner to separate from the Roman Catholic church. This, for the latter, severe blow, was hastened, as so many others have been, by the indiscreet zeal of the diocesan vicar, Latussek, who, towards the end of April, wrote, demanding a contradiction from Theiner, of "the reports in circulation respecting his intended junction with the German. Catholics; failing which, their truth would be taken for granted, and his excommunication follow." Theiner, it is said, replied, he would not give the demanded declaration; that the chapter might do its pleasure as regarded him; but, if it decided on hostile measures, he had five statements ready, which he likewise would lay before the public, and which might, perchance, be neither agreeable nor beneficial to the chapter. The

threatened breach was apparently healed through the intervention of Dr. Ritter (canon of the cathedral), but, on the renewal of similar reports in the newspapers, and when a reprint of some of Theiner's works, written assuredly in no ultramontane spirit, began to appear, Latussek again launched a threatening letter against the priest of Hundsfeld, which occasioned his inviting his patron and churchwardens to meet him on the morning of the 17th of June, when he declared to them his resolution to lay down his office in the Romish church, and to give intimation to that effect to the diocesan vicar. This he accordingly did, and his immediate suspension and conditional excommunication (that is, if he do not within a given time return to the bosom of the church) followed, as a matter of course.

The character of Theiner, whether as a general scholar, thoroughly trained theologian, eloquent writer, long-experienced priest, and expert controversialist, joined to his blameless life and orthodox creed, makes him the very man needed by the Catholic reformers at the present crisis. Invitations from Berlin and Leipsic, with very considerable temporal offers (which, however, may well be deemed uninfluential with the man who has voluntarily laid down the richest cure in Silesia), have been declined for the present, though in the most friendly terms; and a gratifying testimony to his value, especially to their cause, is expressed in an address presented to him, in the name of the Breslaw Catholic reformers, on the 27th ult., by their most distinguished members, and in which they declare their willingness to follow him and Rongé under the Christian banner, and trusting to the defence of" the sword of the Spirit." He has, without exactly accepting any pastoral charge among them, announced his determination to remain, for the present, in Breslaw, regarding Silesia as the cradle of the new reformation, he himself, beyond all question, having been its first mover in years gone by. It is, perhaps, a no less wise than natural resolve, since nowhere else can his influence and his example be expected to work so powerfully as in

his native province, and among his former clerical associates, many of whom are believed to be of kindred mind with him, as to the necessity of reforms in the Roman Catholic Church. A very great and abiding service has been already rendered to the reformed Catholic church by Dr. Theiner in a just published liturgy and form of public worship for their use, which justifies the expectations of the Berlin protestors, whose disappointment at Theiner's declining their offered pastorate led to the temporary division (mentioned in the "Echo" for July), but whom this work will, it is hoped, tend to reunite. The solemnity of the mass, by which he understands the celebration of the Lord's Supper, and which he regards as properly the rallying point of the New Testament church service, is by him divested of all superstitious and papal additions. He professes to return to the model of the first Christian churches, and therefore says, "the German Catholic worship must be purged of all the pomp and glitter of outward ceremonial, and adopt the noble simplicity of apostolic Christianity in their room; and, without excluding the aids of music, painting, and architecture, these must be only employed in so far as it is compatible with a dignified simplicity, and with elevating the spiritual above the material sense." On this ground, splendid garments, burning of incense, signing themselves with the cross, genuflexions, and other unmeaning ceremonies, unknown to the first Christians, as well as the worship of the host, which was introduced only in the thirteenth century, are to be discontinued; and, while all mysterious and magical influences are denied to the mass, as the productions of ages of gross superstition, the ordinance of a preached gospel is to be restored to its place in public worship, after the reading of portions of Scripture in the German tongue. The communion in both kinds is given back to the laity, and the compulsory auricular confession abolished. The prayers which he has introduced into the liturgy are copied from those in the oldest Catholic prayer-books; and he has, with admirable ability, contrived to embody in his "reformed mass "all those purer