Tausen set out in 1517, a year memorable for the beginning of the Reformation, and betook himself to Louvain, cherishing the hope that some sparks from Wittenberg might have fallen there: but he found nothing but darkness. He pined for air, he could not breathe, and, anxious to be nearer to the town from which the light proceeded, he went to Cologne. But there too, as at Louvain, he found nothing but idle questionings of a barren scholasticism. Sick of these trifles, these inanities,[218] he felt a need more and more pressing of a pure doctrine and of solid studies. The works of Luther which found their way to Cologne were read there with as much eagerness as are the bulletins from a great army during a war. Tausen devoured them with the utmost eagerness. One day it was the ‘Asterisks,’ another it was the ‘Resolutions,’ a third, the discourse on ‘Excommunication,’ and then others besides. When he had done reading he would close the book with reverence, and think within himself, ‘Oh, what would it be to hear him myself!’ He was drawn by two opposing forces. The strict prohibition of his prior held him back; the living word of Luther was calling him. Should he go or not? His soul was agitated by a violent struggle. Should he choose night or day? Is it not written in the Scriptures that a man must be ready to sell all that he has that he may buy the truth? He no longer hesitated; and, disregarding the rash promise which he had made, he left the banks of the Rhine, in 1519, and betook himself to Wittenberg. He heard Luther, he heard Melanchthon; he was at Wittenberg at the time of the appearance of the ‘Appeal to the German Nobility;’ he was there when Luther burnt the pope’s bulls, and when the reformer set out for Worms to make his appearance before Charles V. The young Scandinavian, finding in the Gospel the truth and the peace which he had been so earnestly seeking, embraced with all his heart the cause of the Reformation. In October, 1521, he quitted Saxony and returned to his monastery, determined to diffuse in his native land the light which he had found at Wittenberg.[219]