 The First Secession was over the right to appoint in cases where a patron made no effort to fill a vacancy. The result was that a group of four ministers, led by Ebenezer Erskine, the minister of Stirling, formed a distinct "Associate Presbytery" in 1733, but were not forced from the kirk until 1740. This movement was initially very small, but was petitioned by the praying societies with requests for preaching, leading to rapid growth. Although its founding ministers were from Perthshire and Fife, the forty congregations they had established by 1740 were widely spread across the country, mainly among the middle classes of major towns. The Secessionists soon split amongst themselves over the issue of the burgess oath, which was administered after the 1745 rebellion as an anti-Jacobite measure, but which implied that the Church of Scotland was the only true church. The "burghers", led by Erskine, maintained that the oath could be taken, but they were excommunicated by an "anti-burgher" faction, led by Andrew Gibb, who established a separate General Associate Synod. In the 1790s the Seceders became embroiled in the Old and New Light controversy. The "Old Lichts" continued to follow the principles of the Covenanters, while the "New Lichts" were more focused on personal salvation, considered the strictures of the Covenants as less binding and that a connection of the church and the state was not warranted.
