This was the beginning of a great controversy between the liberal preachers and those ministers who were sticklers for the old ecclesiastical order. The sticklers not only found fault with this method of supplying the demand, but criticised the revivals and their attendant demonstrations. There was also between the liberals and the conservatives some divergences in doctrinal belief centered upon that portion of the confession of faith and the catechism which it was claimed taught the doctrine of fatalism. These divergences, protracted through several years, grew with time, until finally they became so serious that the Synod of Kentucky appointed a commission to meet at Gasper River Meeting House and endeavor to adjust them. The attempt failed, the controversy seemed unending. To end it, these two presbyteries were dissolved by order of the Synod, but they still continued to advance to the ministry men not up to the educational standard of the church, nor in accord with the doctrine of predestination. This was very offensive to the conservative membership and ministry of the church, while the liberal or revival party, deeming themselves oppressed and wronged argued: “There is no other way to supply our churches with preachers. Your doctrine of predestination is the fatalism of the ancients.” The final result was a revolutionary measure headed by Samuel McAdoo, Finis Ewing and Samuel King, men taken into the ministry and ordained under the expedience policy. They met and formed their own presbytery, calling it the Cumberland Presbytery after the one recently dissolved by the Kentucky Synod. A short while after this schism, the Synod of Kentucky met to devise ways and means of adjusting the differences pending between the church organization and the churches of the Cumberland country. Every Presbyterian church of the state was represented by either a presiding or ruling elder. The feeling from the first was intense. Three distinct groups of partisans were in attendance. The conservatives, led by the Reverend Thomas Small, were in the majority. They insisted that all ministers who did not believe in predestination and who had been ordained without possessing the educational qualifications set forth under the rules of the church should be suspended, and that all physical manifestations or exhibitions of an exuberant Christian spirit by the congregation should be forbidden. The radicals, led by Samuel McAdoo, who, though he admitted he was not up to the Presbyterian educational standard, insisted he was called, possibly predestined to preach, and declared that the Synod to close the breach, must take the Cumberland Presbytery with its uneducated preachers and its schism denying predestination into the organization else they would be forced to establish a distinct organization.