During the political upheaval of the eighteenth century, interest in theology was by no means quiescent, and in the seventeen-forties the colonies were roused by the religious agitation known as the Great Awakening. Puritans had fought with equal rancor any dissenter from their doctrine, were he Antinomian or Anabaptist, Anglican, Papist, Gortonist, or Quaker; the Pilgrim Independents had soon lost something of their liberalism; but whatever the particular slant of opinion, men of the later generations in the vigorous young country were bound to think for themselves. Jonathan Edwards crystallized the tenets of the old faith into a flawless theology; Chauncy led the liberals from doctrines dealing with eternal damnation to something like Universalism; but George Whitefield, brushing aside contentions involving the supremacy of the intellect, made that direct appeal to the heart for which men hungered. He infused fresh warmth into Calvinism and his adherents were known as the “New Lights,” his opponents the “Old Lights.” Pulpit, press, and people were stirred to frenzied interest. Whitefield, preaching up and down the country with a flame of eloquence and a sympathetic understanding of the poor and distressed that drew men to him by the thousand, was denounced as an “itinerant scourge.” As early as 1745, ten of the Cape clergy arraigned the new method of salvation in terms that betray some anxiety. “It tends to destroy the usefulness of ministers among their people, in places where the gospel is settled and faithfully preached in its purity,” they complain. “That it promotes strife and contention, a censorious and uncharitable spirit and those numerous schisms and separations which have already destroyed the peace and unity, and at this time threaten the subversion of many churches.”