Relief Church

He had been deposed by the General Assembly in 1752 after he refused to participate in inducting a minister to the Inverkeithing parish since the parishioners opposed the appointment.

[2] The Relief body was liberal, welcoming independents, Episcopalians and other devout men to join them.

[2] In 1766, the distinguished minister James Baine resigned from his presbytery of Paisley and joined the Relief Church.

The Relief Church issued no distinctive testimonies, and a certain breadth of view was shown in the formal declaration of their terms of communion, first made in 1773, which allowed occasional communion with those of the Episcopal and Independent persuasion.

In 1794, the Relief Church adopted as its hymn-book Patrick Hutchison's Sacred Songs and Hymns on Various Passages of Scripture, and it was Hutchison who established the first systematic definition of the Relief Church's beliefs.