COLONIAL REPERCUSSIONS

The events of 1843 created great interest in Australia and local Presbyterians could not remain unaffected. One question of immediate consequence was whether the Synod of Australia should receive ministers from the Established Church of Scotland. Some took the view that there was no need to be too precise about the requirements for the ministry and that the Disruption had little bearing on the Australian situation. Others were more perceptive. They realised that many ministers who then remained in the Established Church of Scotland accepted the idea that the State might exercise control over various aspects of the spiritual life of the Church, even though this was manifestly contrary to God's Word. To accept men of such compromised principles was to sow the seed of departure from Biblical standards. Further, while the Disruption was a Scottish event, the principles involved were of universal significance.

Geography could not alter the fact that those Presbyterians who upheld the Headship of Christ and the spiritual independence of the Church were duty bound to support the stand taken by the Free Church.  Hence a minority in the Synod of Australia, led by the Rev. William McIntyre of Maitland and the Rev. James Forbes of Scots Church, Melbourne, upheld the truth that ‘A Church must honour Christ in the way she orders her life, even if it means considerable cost. She must back up her words with consistent behaviour’. They declared, ‘We are not prepared to prefer the Established Church over the Free Church for our supply of ministers. And in any event we ought to be an independent body’. McIntyre and three colleagues withdrew and formed the Presbyterian Church of Eastern Australia in Sydney on the 10th October, 1846. In Melbourne, James Forbes acted similarly and the body he founded, the Free Presbyterian Church of Victoria, co-operated with the PCEA and in 1953 became fully part of it. Other Free Presbyterian Churches were founded in South Australia and Tasmania.