in possession of the Sees. In the year 1707, the Abjuration Act was ordered by Parliament to be enforced in the case of all suspected persons: and this proceeding tended to keep back some persons, who otherwise might have returned to the national communion.
I have before alluded to Kettlewell's opinions. Though he differed from Dodwell, as has been shewn, yet there is reason to believe, that had he lived until the death of Lloyd, he would have acted with Nelson and Brokesby. The writer of the Life of Kettle well thus speaks of Dodwell's "Case in View:" "When he had lived to see all (speaking of the deprived Bishops) except one or two of them go before him into eternity, he began thereupon to reconsider what had been written by him so early after the Revolution: and being desirous that this rupture might be closed, and an end put to this most unhappy schism, that he might dye in peace, he wrote and published his Case in View, to shew that in case these his invalidly deprived Fathers should, either by death or resignation, leave all their sees vacant, none would be then longer obliged to keep up their separation from those Bishops, who, according to him, were as yet involved in the guilt of schism."[1]
In the year 1707, two years after the publication of the Case in View, Dodwell put forth another work on the same subject, entitled "A Further Prospect of the Case in View, in answer to some new objections, not there considered." Certain objections were raised against a return to the established communion, which were not considered in the Case in View. These objections are stated and met in The Further Prospect. The chief of them refer to the Prayers for the exist-
- ↑ Life of Kettlewell, 127, 128.