'A Bishop in the Greek tongue is the same that a Superintendent is in the Latin': the Articles of Perth, the Jacobean Church of Scotland, and Scottish episcopal order

We haue abjured Episcopall gouernment, and therefore we cannot lawfully admit Episcopall Confirmation ... it is damnable presumption, [for bishops] to appropriate vnto themselues the dutie that belongs to all Pastors.

Having considered at some length the defence given by David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38) - in his 1621 account of the 1618 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth - of the provision in the Articles of Perth for kneeling to receive the holy Sacrament, we now turn to its provision for Confirmation administered by bishops:

it is thought good, that the minister in every parish, should catechise all young children of eight years of age, and see that they have the knowledge, and be able to make rehearsal of the Lord's Prayer, Belief, and Ten Commandments, with answers to the questions of the small catechism, used in our church, and that every bishop in his visitation, shall censure the minister who shall be found remiss therein; and said bishops shall cause the said children to be presented before them, and bless them with prayer for increase of their knowledge, and the continuance of God's heavenly graces with every one of them.

The words at the outset of the post provide the response of the opponents of the Articles of Perth: there cannot be episcopal Confirmation in an ecclesiastical polity which has "abjured episcopal government".

For Lindsay, of course, the irony in such a response was that, by 1621, the Church of Scotland had known forms of episcopal government for longer periods since the Reformation than it had known government by presbytery. A system of superintendency had been upheld by the 1560 Book of Discipline, with the 1572 Concordat of Leith permitting the appointment of bishops by the Crown. In 1580, the office of bishop was rejected by the General Assembly, and government by presbytery introduced. This, however, was rolled back by James VI appointing bishops in 1600 and then ensuring that they received consecration in the historic succession from English bishops in 1610. Of the 61 years from the settlement of the Reformation in Scotland until 1621, the Church of Scotland had known episcopal order, in one form or another, for 41 of those years.

Moreover, the Superintendency established by the 1560 Book of Discipline envisaged the understanding of Confirmation reinstated by the Articles of Perth:

this part of Episcopall gouernment yee haue not abjured, but haue approued by your assertorie oath, and obliged your selfe to maintayne and obey by your promissorie oath; if so bee, yee did sweare to the Policie set downe in the first booke of Discipline, Anno 1560. as yee haue often professed. For the wordes in that booke touching this point of Bishops dutie, are these:

After the Superintendents haue remayned in their chiefe Townes, three or foure moneths at the most, they shall be compelled (vnlesse by sicknesse onely they be retayned) to re-enter in their Visitation. In which they shall not onely preach, but also examine the life, diligence, and behauiour of the Ministers, as also the order of their Churches, and manners of their people: They must further consider, how the poore are prouided for, and the youth instructed.

As Lindsay notes, it is quite clear here that the Superintendent's role examining the youth is of a different nature to that of the Pastor's ministry. In other words, the system of Superintendency was not based on a parity of ministers:

By these wordes it is manifest, that it was not a thing common to euery Pastor to visite Churches, and trie the diligence of Ministers, specially concerning their instruction of the youth, but that it was proper to the Superintendent. 

Lindsay also emphasises that Superintendency was merely a form of episcopacy, under a different name:

Now, if yee haue sworne that this is lawfull in the person of the Superintendent, how can yee call it a damnable presumption in the person of a Bishop? whose function and name is the same, differing onely in the origination of the word, the one being drawne from the Latine, the other from the Greeke: for a Bishop in the Greeke tongue is the same that a Superintendent is in the Latine. And in visiting of Churches, the triall of the education of children, which now is a dutie belonging to the Bishops function, is here set downe as a speciall point of the Superintendents office.

This reflected a well-established understanding in both the Church of Scotland and beyond. Brian Duppa, made Bishop of Winchester in 1638 and a strong supporter of the Royal ecclesiastical policies of the 1630s, described the Superintendents of the Scottish Church as those who "exercised fully the power and discharged faithfully the Office of a Bishop, though under another style". Likewise, Laud himself, in his 1622 debate with Fisher the Jesuit, had recognised the Lutheran system of superintendency as episcopacy under another name:

among the other Lutherans the Thing [i.e. episcopacy] is retained, though not the Name. For instead of Bishops they are called Superintendents, and instead of Archbishops, General Superintendents. And yet even here too, these Names differ more in sound, than in sense.

John Bramhall, Bishop of Derry 1633-1661 and a key figure in implementing the Royal vision for the Church of Ireland in the 1630s, pointed the majority of Churches in Protestant Christendom sharing in an ecclesiastical order, whether they described the office as bishops or superintendents: 

It appears, that three parts of four of the Protestant Churches have either Bishops, or superintendents, which is all one.

Within the Church of Scotland, John Spottiswoode, Archbishop of Saint Andrews 1615-39, in his The History of the Church of Scotland, set out how Superintendency ensured an episcopal order for the Scottish Church:

For did men understand how things went at our Reformation and since that time, they would never have been moved to think that Episcopacy was against the Constitutions of this Church; one of the first things done in it being the placing of Superintendents with Episcopal Power in the same, and no act so often iterated in the General Assemblies of the Church, as that Ministers should be obedient to their Superintendents under pain of Deprivation ... 

In the Preface to the work, Spottiswoode was even more explicit:

The Superintendents held their Office during life, and their power was Episcopal; for they did elect and ordain Ministers, they presided in Synods, and directed all Church Censures, neither was any Excommunication pronounced without their warrant.

When the Articles of Perth, therefore, provided for episcopal Confirmation in the Church of Scotland, it was a restoration of a practice set out in the 1560 Book of Discipline. It gave expression to the episcopal order that the Church of Scotland had known for the significant majority of years from the settlement of the Reformation in that Kingdom. This was a matter neither of English practice or English order: the Articles of Perth restored a Scottish practice, dependent on a Scottish ecclesiastical order - an ecclesiastical order found in many Churches throughout Protestant Europe.

(The first picture is of a late 17th century drawing of Brechin, Lindsay's See. The second is of Archbishop Spottiswoode.)