either to the Church or the faith. Accordingly we find that among the Latin populations the influence of the pope became necessary to the admission and establishment of the Jesuit society. They yielded only to his authority, because they regarded disobedience of him as heresy. It was otherwise with the Germans. As the descendants of the old Teutons, they had some conceptions of natural liberty, and had indicated a desire for popular government by the election of their kings. The Scriptures had been placed in their hands as early as the fourth century, when Bishop Ulfilas translated the Gospels and part of the Old Testament into the Gothic language, thereby making them accessible to the people, and stimulating the desire to read and understand them. This created a sense of individuality, which soon became more diffused than elsewhere in Europe, thus making the Germans an intelligent and tolerant race. Their tolerance, therefore, when the Jesuits appeared, prevented any popular commotion. By that time the influences of the Reformation had become greatly extended, and had impressed the minds of a large number of the German people. Protestantism had become established, and the population was divided into two religious parties--Roman Catholic and Protestant. But these parties, influenced towards each other by the old Teutonic liberality and tolerance, lived together in perfect peace and harmony, each maintaining its own religious faith and worship without interference by the other. There were also divisions among the Protestants--some being the followers of Luther, and others of Calvin. But there was no religious strife between Roman Catholics and Protestants. According to the German custom of that period, there were earnest disputations about doctrines, but no tumult--nothing to disturb the quiet of society. Persecution on account of religious differences was entirely unknown; a persecutor would have been considered a public enemy. The true spirit of Christianity prevailed--the natural consequence of the same form of religious liberty provided for by the institutions of the United States, and which might now exist throughout the Christian world, but for the baneful influences of Jesuitism. The Venetian ambassador, then in Germany, thus describes the peaceful condition of the German Christians: "One party has accustomed itself to put up with the other so well, that, in any place where there happens to be a mixed population, little or no notice is taken as to whether a person is a Catholic or Protestant. Not only villages, but even families, are in this manner mixed up together, and there even exist houses where the children belong to one persuasion while the parents belong to the other, and where brothers adhere to opposite creeds. Catholics and Protestants, indeed, intermarry with each other, and no one takes any notice of the circumstance, or offers any opposition thereto."[67]