At length, this same year, an important event occurred to crown these various measures in favor of Protestantism. The king, calmly pursuing his course, resolved to call Tausen to discharge his ministry in a more important sphere, namely, at Copenhagen itself, and he appointed him pastor of the church of St. Nicholas. It cost Tausen some pain to leave Viborg. He foresaw what opposition and enmities he would have to encounter in the capital; he did not, however, shrink from it, but set out. In the course of his journey he let no opportunity slip of proclaiming the truth. Like St. Paul he preached in season and out of season. Having met a senator of the kingdom, Count Gyldenstern, a man held in very high esteem, he announced to him the Gospel. The senator could not resist the truth. ‘One thing alone perplexes me,’ said he; ‘I cannot persuade myself that the Church, which has for centuries shone with so much splendor, can be false, and all this new religion which Luther preaches, true. The true religion must needs be the most ancient.’[285] Tausen was able easily to answer that the faith preached by the reformers is found in the ancient writings of the Apostles. He then went on his way.
The evangelical Christians of Copenhagen gave lively demonstrations of their joy at his arrival; and the zealous doctor saw in a little while an immense crowd gathered to his preaching. His hearers did not rest satisfied with merely giving signs of approval of the doctrine which he preached, but they gained over those who were still halting between the Gospel and the papacy, so that ere long the majority of the people took the side of the Word of God. The great truths of salvation till that time hidden, they said, are now disclosed and presented to us eloquently and soundly, so that they are impressed on our souls.[286] An impulse still more powerful was about to be given to the Reformation.
In the month of May, 1530, the Imperial Diet assembled in the free city of Augsburg. No one doubted that the emperor, who had just been crowned by the pope in Italy, would be desirous of discharging his obligation to the latter by compelling the Protestants to prostrate themselves anew before the triple crown. The Danish prelates, especially, were persuaded of this. They took a higher tone, and said that if they could but meet the Lutherans, they would speedily reduce them to silence. They assumed to give at Copenhagen a rehearsal of the drama which was about to be acted at Augsburg. The Danish evangelicals, on their part, ardently desired a conference; and the king himself acknowledged the necessity for it. He therefore caused proclamation to be made throughout Denmark. ‘The bishops, the prelates on the one side, and the Lutheran preachers, Master John Tausen and his adherents, on the other side, were invited to appear at the Diet, before the king and the royal council, for the purpose of presenting their confession of faith and of defending it, to the end that one sole Christian religion might be established in the kingdom.’[287]