The Form of Presbyterial Church Government was a product of the Westminster Assembly as part of the plan for a covenanted uniformity in religion for England, Scotland, and Ireland. Of all the Westminster documents, it is the least polished and the least used.
It is the least polished because, although much time was spend debating its various propositions, its final compiling and editing were done hurriedly to meet deadlines out with the control of the Assembly.
It is the least used because it failed to satisfy the authorising bodies. In England, Parliament did not enact the document as a whole but passed into legislation portions of it in such a way that the Form itself was lost. In Scotland, the 1645 General Assembly gave the Form provisional approval, and even then, with qualifications.
The Form founded its propositions on the bases of jus divinum, recommendation, and permission. Only the office of deacon and right of a congregation to reject a minster for just cause were settled based on jus divinum. The key elements of the Scottish Presbyterian system – ruling elders, presbytery, and graduated courts – were settled based on permission, with ministerial ordination at the hands of preaching presbyters and no single congregation being able to ordain a minister being set down as recommendations. On the one hand, in approving the Form, the Scots did not manage to secure their Presbyterianism on the basis of jus divinum. But, on the other, they did not lose any feature of their system and hoped that even limited exposure to it would provoke greater interest and acceptance in England.
However, by 1647, the General Assembly was not satisfied that the truth of Christ regarding ecclesiastical offices and assemblies had been fully expressed. The Scots had hopes for the Directory of Church Government; but, as events in England were making uniformity seem less and less likely, and the motivation to accommodate was diminishing in Scotland, in the end, the document was not approved. So, as the English Parliament did not ratify the Form without any substantial alteration, the Act of the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland approving the Propositions concerning Kirk-government and Ordination of Ministers became a dead letter.
Not much mention is made again of the Form. Those who would become the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland omit it from the list of Westminster documents in their 1708 statement of secession from the Church of Scotland. Among the Seceders, it was a term of communion that one would promote the aims of uniformity of religion in the United Kingdom; and the Form as ratified in 1645 was part of that uniformity. Wishing to identify its stance with the attainments of the Second Reformation, the Free Church included the Form as approved by the 1645 Act among its subordinate standards, but as a regulation rather than a test. At the same time, however, both the Secession and Disruption Churches found their form of government, constitutionally, on the Second Book of Discipline and the 1592 Act of the Scottish Parliament, as ratified in the 1690 Revolution Settlement.
The Form of Presbyterial Church Government is an expression of pragmatic Presbyterianism. Insufficient to meet the needs of principled, jus divinum, Presbyterians, it remains unpolished and little used.