A WORD To the Twenty essays towards a Settlement, &c.  
Who under a pretence of a Testimony for God either ignorantly (as charity persuades) or voluntarily, give forth a perilous one, especially as to the concernable mater of it.  
GENTLEMEN,  
HAVING Perused your Essay, I find it as short of its intent as the Nation is of a settlement, but I could wish that it came from such a spirit (as it's swift comprehensions would seem to import) that could at once unite divided interests, and secure them from the undermining attempts of their hypocritical professing leaders. I shall as briefly as I can lay open the weightiest part of your Testimony (waving many honest things therein, though doubtless bottomed with a great deal of craft) which from your Paper I gather to be this, suspending the rights of the Nation, you declare for such men to be Rulers that are qualified and limited according to the word of God, men of courage, fearing God and hating covetousness.  
To this I Object; First, The injustice of your Testimony it being impossible that any number of men should be imposed and perpetuated governors of this Nation without absolute violence offered to the rights thereof, as may be evinced from the practice of the commonwealth of Israel, there being also no reason in nature much less divine, for supremacy or a general subjection, without the consent of the people first had, to the Legislators, conditions and laws thereof.  
Secondly, If upon Objection (that a great part of the people have by acting against, forfeited their right hereto, or otherwise through ignorance of profaneness are incapable of it, and so we contract the Nation into such part unanimously owned the quarrel against Royalty (whose divisions are lamentable and the Land groans under) by what equity can you vindicate your testimony to exclude the interest of those that hazarded their lives and goods equally, if not more than yourselves, to purchase this freedom with you, how will the soul of any impartial man abhor your ingratitude and unchristianlike dealing to ravish that from others and your brethren too, that you would not to be taken from yourselves, what glorious pretence soever this comes under, as the reign of Christ and his kingdom, self, ambition, and a mystery of iniquity may be as well suspected to be the root, though it may be not intended by the more simple ones.  
Thirdly, The Constitution of Government you mention (I mean not the qualifications of the persons) must ineritably induce confusion and ruin, the temper of the Nation being totally unsuitable to it, the minds of most sober men being big with expectations of a more equal distribution of Government, for the reuniting of dissenting parties, so much promised and successfully speculated into of late days, which if again disappointed by the insinuation of an absolute arbitrary and constant power, will aggravate our animosities, inflame hatred, and expose the whole as a prey to the common enemy, besides the confusion, that naturally must follow your model, is very evident, for where will you find discerning spirits that shall pick out men so qualified, and secure the Nation that under a Mask of Religion, they shall not play their own game and exceed their Teachers, and Predecessors? And how can you promise yourselves that those who shall invest such men with power shall remain their obedient humble servants and not when their ends shall be served, with your assistance usher in a single Person again, seeing it may be probable that those who contributed so freely to advance the former, in reason should as eagerly pursue it for themselves.  
Moreover, Gentlemen, If you reflect upon past providences towards episcopacy, and Presbittery, both pretending Divine right, and under it crowding into the civil Government for which they are sufficiently condemned, you will find your pretence to be much of that nature, rather worse, for under covert of Christ's kingdom, you would carry all away, you may well fear your success, for he doth not appear to be a Patron of so much wrong, seeing there are as many fervent lovers of his kingdom, that are not of your mind in this settlement, as you can pretend to, and for this reason to lose their rights, as men will not be owned by that King in the day of his appearing; Neither can we see men so divinely fortified amongst you as to count them more invincible than others to the baits of Honours and profits that may be exposed to them in places of trust. I shall therefore wind up with this advice to you and all others that desire the peace and prosperity of their Country, that they will wait with patience the issues of providence, which as we may hope on good ground, will not long indulge a selfish spirit amongst us, the experience whereof may make men tremble that harbour it: and let us multiply our supplications to Heaven, for a spirit of truth in the Parliament, the only present visible power, to perform their promises to the Nation, to settle them in a well constituted commonwealth, so limited as may secure the interest of the honest, and insinuate to the love of their enemies, and it might be wished, such provisions might be made for elections to power, by lot that providence might have a more immediate dispose thereof, for our good or evil, at his pleasure.  
By a friend to peace and unity, but an enemy to strife and sedition.   

Printed in the Year, 1659.