The conflict that arose was not unlike that which from the beginning of New England history had subsisted between Separatist and Nationalist.

In the Presbyterian conflict, as so often in religious controversies, disciplinary and doctrinal questions were complicated with a difference of race.

The "Old Side" was the Scotch and Irish party; the "New Side" was the New England party, to which many of the old-country ministers adhered.

For successive years the mutual opposition had shown itself in the synod; and in 1740, at the synod meeting at Philadelphia, soon after the departure of Whitefield, the real gravamen of the controversy appeared, in the implied and even express impeachment of the spiritual character of the Old Side ministers.

The impeachment had been implied in the coming of the evangelists uninvited into other men's parishes, as if these were mission ground.