Associate Presbytery

Ballantyne Presbyterian Church is a member of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian denomination. This denomination was formed in the United States through the merging of two presbyteries that came from Scotland (and there had broken away from the Church of Scotland). I have been reading the Memoirs of George Whitefield by John Gillies, and I came across part of a letter that George Whitefield had written Ebenezer Erskine in regard to the Associate Presbytery in Scotland. Written May 16, 1741, Whitefield said,

"This morning I received a kind letter from your brother Ralph, who thinks it best for me wholly to join the Associate Presbytery, if it should please God to send me into Scotland. This I cannot altogether come into. I come only as an occasional preacher, to preach the simple gospel to all that are willing to hear me, of whatever denomination. I write this, that there may not be the least misunderstanding between us. I love and honor the Associate Presbytery in the bowels of Jesus Christ: But let them not be offended, if in all things I cannot immediately fall in with them." Whitefield stayed in the Church of England.