[1] Instead of seeking license from the Church of Scotland, Bell applied to the Presbytery of Relief, founded by Thomas Gillespie in 1761.
[1] This move was without the consent of the Relief Synod, and three years passed before a rupture was resolved.
[1] In 1780 Bell published The Standard of the Spirit lifted up against the Enemy coming in like a Flood, and in 1785 appeared A Proof of the True and Eternal Godhead of the Lord Jesus Christ.
This was a work opposed to Socinians, and Bell was responding in it to the controversy over the Unitarian views of William McGill of Ayr; he also wrote a work of his own, The Articles of Ayr Contrasted with the Oracles of Truth.
[2] He translated from the Latin of Herman Witsius The Controversies stated in Great Britain under the Unhappy Names of Antinomians and Neonomians (posthumously published), as well as A View of the Covenants of Works and Grace, and Sermons on various Important Subjects (1814).