He alludes further to the prayers for the Sovereign, and his view is, that those who join in them are only guilty of what he terms a sinful fact, not of heresy in doctrine. He admits that they are to refuse their assent to those prayers.[1]
In this work Dodwell argued, that the deprived Bishops would have appointed successors in some of their sees, if they had intended to continue the schism after their decease: but in the Appendix he contends, that no such right or power belonged to them. Such substitutes, he says, would fall short of the title of their predecessors, a circumstance which he regards as favourable to the actual possessors of the sees. Such substitutes, he argued, would want several things which the deprived Bishops possessed. The Bishop was consecrated by the Provincial College into a vacant see, which could not have been the case with the substitute. He considered that there were then no altars capable of being injured by other altars, except those of the possessors, which could not be invaded without schism. The Bishops themselves, he says, would have been schismatics, if they had consecrated into full sees: and consequently, they could not convey powers to others, which could not have been exercised by themselves. He shews, that the separation arose in consequence of injury done to the deprived Bishops; that its continuance after the death of the last of them was no assertion of their rights; and that the injury being ended, another cause must be sought, if the separation must be continued. No persons could be injured except the actual possessors; so that the separatists would be the authors of the injury, and therefore schismatics.
- ↑ Case in View now in Fact, p. 115.
