In all directions the democratic spirit was being manifested, and conditions which had been upheld by the restrictive authority of England had to give way. The people were now speaking, and not the ministers only. It was an age of individualism, and of the reassertion of the tendency that had characterized New England from the first, but that had been held in check by autocratic power. There was no outbreak, no rapid change, no iconoclastic overturning of old institutions and customs, but the people were coming to their own, thinking for themselves. In reality, the people were conservative, especially in New England; and they moved slowly, there was little infidelity, and steadily were the old ideals maintained. Yet the individualism would assert itself. Men held the old creeds in distinctly personal ways, and the churches grew into more and more of independency. The theological development of the eighteenth century took two directions: that of rationalism and a demand for free inquiry, as represented by Jonathan Mayhew and William Bentley; and that of a philanthropic protest against the harsh features of Calvinism, as represented by Charles Chauncy and the Universalists. The demand that all theological problems should be submitted to reason for vindication or readjustment was not widely urged; but a few men recognized the worth of this claim, and applied this method without hesitation. A larger number followed them with hesitating steps, but with a growing confidence in reason as God's method for man's finding and maintaining the truth. The other tendency grew out of a benevolent desire to justify the ways of God to man, and was the expression of a deepening faith that the Divine Being deals with his children in a fatherly manner. That God is generous and loving was the faith of Dr. Chauncy, as it was of the Universalists and of the more liberal party among the Calvinists. Their philanthropic feelings toward their fellow-men seemed to them representative of God's ways of dealing with his creatures. [1] Levi L. Paine, A Critical History of the Evolution of Trinitarianism, 105. "Nathaniel Emmons held tenaciously to three real persons. He said, 'It is as easy to conceive of God existing in three persons as in one person.' This language shows that Emmons employed the term 'person' in the strict literal sense. The three are absolutely equal, this involving the metaphysical assumption that in the Trinity being and person are not coincident. Emmons is the first theologian who asserts that, though we cannot conceive that three persons should be one person, we may conceive that three persons may be one Being, 'if we only suppose that being may signify something different from person in respect to Deity.'" [2] E.H. Gillett, History and Literature of the Unitarian Controversy. Historical Magazine, April 1871; second series, IX. 222. [3] Letter to Scripturista by Paulinus, 18.