He could not all at once throw off convictions which were dear to him and accept contrary opinions. Believing, however, that it was no business of his to regulate matters of faith, he determined to hold the balance even, and in his capacity of king to lean neither to one side nor to the other. There were some points of resemblance between this prince and Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, who, though he did not immediately declare for the Reformation, allowed full liberty to Luther’s teaching. Christian’s uncle felt himself free to keep the promises which he had made to the nobles, and he thereby won their liking. He did not deprive the clergy of their pomp or their wealth; and with respect to the reformers and their disciples, instead of persecuting them with fire and sword as the Pope required him to do, he let them alone, and did them neither good nor harm. If the Reformation was to be established in Denmark, it would be so not by the power of the king, but by the power of God and of the people. The state would not interfere. Frederick as king, moreover, thus continued what he had begun as duke. Before Frederick was seated on the throne of Denmark, the Reformation had begun in the duchies.[249] Husum, a town situated on the coast of the North Sea, at a distance of six or seven leagues from Schleswig, had seen this light arise which was afterwards to make glad so many souls in these lands. The chapter of Husum was dependent on the cathedral church of Schleswig, in which twenty-four vicars discharged the functions of the idle or absent prebendaries. One of them, Herrmann Tast, awakened by the earliest sound of the Reformation, had seized the Bible and read the works of Luther; and about 1520 he publicly professed the truth which he had discovered. He gained over one of his colleagues. One of the principal men of the town, a learned man and the son of a natural daughter of Duke Frederick, took Tast under his protection, and assigned him a room in his own house in which he might set forth the riches which he had discovered. The number of his hearers increased to such an extent that, in 1522, he was obliged to hold his meetings in the open air, in the cemetery. He used to take his stand under a lime-tree, and begin by singing Luther’s psalm _Eine feste Burg_; and there, on that field of the dead, he proclaimed the words of the Son of God. Many of those who had heard them had received the new life. Tast did not long confine himself to preaching the Gospel at Husum, but began to visit the country districts, the towns and villages, diffusing the knowledge [Sidenote: Edict Of Toleration.] of the Saviour in all the country round. Many of the townsmen and the nobles believed. The old bishop of Schleswig, a tolerant man, and acquainted with the views of Frederick, winked at the progress of evangelical doctrine. Frederick, as soon as he became king, promulgated an edict by which religious liberty was formally established