Although reliably attributed to Alexander Henderson, The Government and Order of the Church of Scotland is an anonymous pamphlet written from the point of view of a visitor to Scotland who presents an outline of the worship and government of the Church from first-hand knowledge. As the author says, a description not a demonstration is his intent. He is describing what the Church of Scotland does rather than why she does it.
The work was written in 1641. At this time, the Scots had won an advantage through the Bishops’ Wars and had brought Charles I to the negotiating table, first at Ripon and then in London. Their proposal was that Presbyterianism be implemented in England for a trial period. However, two other things, which might be related, have a bearing here. First, there was a request by some English minsters of Presbyterian views for aid from the Church of Scotland. Second, it was becoming clear that there was a possibility that Independency rather than Presbyterianism might replace Episcopacy as the Church of England’s form of government. Into this situation, Henderson wrote his pamphlet to describe what was done in Scotland and Gillespie wrote his An Assertion of the Government of the Church of Scotland to establish two key parts of the Presbyterian system, ruling elders and presbytery, on biblical grounds.
What is Henderson doing? He is giving a subjective description of the Church’s practice. The objective standards behind the practice are Knox’s Book of Common Order, the Second Book of Discipline, and various Acts of General Assembly and Parliament. He acknowledges that in the application some ideas, plan and practice do not quite match. For example, he says that a number of the distinctive features of the office of Doctor are not relevant because most Doctors are drawn from the ministry.
How accurate are his descriptions? It is difficult to answer that question as we are not there to verify his statements. If we take the example of worship service on a typical Lord’s Day, there are other contemporary descriptions to which we might compare Henderson’s. One description gives the same order of service but is more pointed in describing the role of the Reader. Another tells of the Reader reading from the Old Testament in the morning service and from the New in the afternoon. Clearly, Henderson outlines the general practice. He gives us the theme, but not all the variations. Similarly, he describes all the things which might be on a Presbytery meeting docket, but a visitor might not witness all of these in one meeting. Henderson’s picture captures the features though not every line on the face of the Church of Scotland. It is not a “warts and all” representation. However, he has not committed the same error as Holbein the Younger in his portrait of Anne of Cleves.
There have been three editions of The Government and Order of the Church of Scotland: the first in 1641, the second in 1644, and the third in 1690. Interestingly, the third edition often has bound with it the Westminster Directory of Church Government, the only product of the Assembly not adopted in some form by the Church of Scotland. The first two editions were for English consumption. The third was used at home to inform a new generation of the way things were once done and ought to be done again. Pardovan's Collections became its fuller replacement.
The Government and Order of the Church of Scotland gives the modern reader a sense of what Rutherford and Gillespie argued for in principle looked like in practice.