In the Presbyterian Church at this time were three pretty distinct types of theological thought. First, there was the unmitigated Scotch Calvinism; secondly, there was the modification of this system, which became naturalized in the church after the Great Awakening, when Jonathan Dickinson and Jonathan Edwards, from neighbor towns in Massachusetts, came to be looked upon as the great Presbyterian theologians; thirdly, there was the "consistent Calvinism," that had been still further evolved by the patient labor of students in direct succession from Edwards, and that was known under the name of "Hopkinsianism." Just now the latest and not the least eminent in this school, Dr. Nathaniel W. Taylor, of New Haven, was enunciating to large and enthusiastic classes in Yale Divinity School new definitions and forms of statement giving rise to much earnest debate. The alarm of those to whom the very phrase "improvement in theology" was an abomination expressed itself in futile indictments for heresy brought against some of the most eminently godly and useful ministers in all the church. Lyman Beecher, of Lane Seminary, Edward Beecher, J. M. Sturtevant, and William Kirby, of Illinois College, and George Duffield, of the presbytery of Carlisle, Pa., were annoyed by impeachments for heresy, which all failed before reaching the court of last resort. But repeated and persistent prosecutions of Albert Barnes, of Philadelphia, were destined to more conspicuous failure, by reason of their coming up year after year before the General Assembly, and also by reason of the position of the accused as pastor of the mother church of the denomination, the First Church of Philadelphia, which was the customary meeting-place of the Assembly; withal by reason of the character of the accused, the honor and love in which he was held for his faithful and useful work as pastor, his world-wide fame as a devoted and believing student of the Scriptures, and the Christlike gentleness and meekness with which he endured the harassing of church trials continuing through a period of seven years, and compelling him, under an irregular and illegal sentence of the synod, to sit silent in his church for the space of a year, as one suspended from the ministry.