Henderson was the statesman and an acknowledged leader among the Scottish Presbyterians at the Westminster Assembly. This work was written on behalf of the Scottish commissioners attending the Assembly, while they were in London in 1644.

Masson called Henderson "the greatest, the wisest, and the most liberal of the Scottish Presbyterians -- the greatest man in the Church after Knox" (cited in Johnston, Treasury of the Scottish Covenant, p. 298).

The Evan. Succ. magazine wrote, "It is due to him more than to any other man that Scotland since his day has been Presbyterian and not Prelatic, that the Westminster divines, and not Archbishop Laud, have given us our theology and our Church order" (Ibid.).

When you read Henderson, especially on Church government, you are tasting of the works of a man that "became a prince in the Scottish Israel of his day, and the hero of the Covenanted Second Reformation" (Ibid.).