ABSTRACT
The Disruption of the Church of Scotland which took place in May 1843 was not the first secession from the Establishment although it was by far the most serious. Two important secessions had taken place prior to the Disruption—both in the eighteenth century. The first secession occurred in 1733 when the General Assembly expelled four ministers who had formed the most implacable opposition to the Patronage Act of 1712. The second secession from the Establishment took place in 1752 and led to formation of the Relief Church. The Evangelicals, hardline Calvinists in their attitude towards Salvation and the need to regulate society on Calvinist principles, remained powerful in the Church in the first half of the eighteenth century although there were visible signs of puritanism losing its impetus by the 1730s. The revival of the Evangelical party coincides with the period of rapid industrialisation, urbanisation, population growth and migration of the late eighteenth and the early decades of nineteenth century.
