The renovated body of the church was inspired with fresh energy. On the fall of the Jesuits, the other extreme, Illuminatism, had raised its head, but had been compelled to yield before a higher power and before the moral force of Germany. The majority of the German Catholics now clung to the idea that the regeneration of the abused and despised church was best to be attained by the practice of evangelical simplicity and morality, that Jesuitism and Illuminatism were, consequently, to be equally avoided, and the better disposed among the Protestants to be imitated. Sailer, the great teacher of the German clergy, and Wessenberg, whom Rome on this account refused to raise to the bishopric of Constance, acted upon this idea. In Silesia, a number of youthful priests, headed by Theimer, impatient for the realization of the union, apparently approaching, of this moderate party with the equally moderately disposed party among the Protestants into one great German church, took, in 1825, the bold step of renouncing celibacy. This party was however instantly suppressed by force by the king of Prussia. Theimer, in revenge, turned Jesuit and wrote against Prussia. Professors inclined to Ultramontanism were, meanwhile, installed in the universities, more particularly at Bonn, Munster and Tubingen, by the Protestant as well as the Catholic governments; by them the clerical students were industriously taught that they were not Germans but subjects of Rome, and were flattered with the hope of one day participating in the supremacy about to be regained by the pontiff. Every priest inspired with patriotic sentiments, or evincing any degree of tolerance toward his Protestant fellow citizens, was regarded as guilty of betraying the interests of the church to the state and the tenets of the only true church to heretics. Gorres, once Germany's most spirited champion against France, now appeared as the champion of Rome in Germany. The scandalous schisms in the Protestant church and the no less scandalous controversies carried on in the Protestant literary world rendered both contemptible, and, as in the commencement of the seventeenth century, appeared to offer a favorable opportunity for an attack on the part of the Catholics.