Yet Dodwell wrote from Shottesbrook, August 29th, 1700, to Archbishop Tenison, requesting him to use his influence in providing Bishops for the colonies. “The occasion of this present address,” he says, “is not to beg any favour for myself, nor for our dear fathers and brethren whom I follow in this excellent cause; it is for that very body which is headed by you against us, which, we hope, will at length unite with us on the old terms, when worldly concerns are removed. You have an opportunity put into your hands of doing God service in the plantations, and of entitling yourself thereby to greater rewards from God than you can expect from any of your worldly designs.” And in November of the same year I discover him corresponding with the same distinguished person as to healing the Church’s wound. First, he despatched a _feeler_ on the subject, which was civilly received, with a request for further communication, and then he propounded certain terms of recommunion. He thought the Clergy who had taken the oaths might agree with the Nonjurors so far as to maintain, in opposition to all Commonwealth’s-men, the doctrine of passive obedience “to the lawful Prince for the time being,” each party being left to apply the principle in his own way. As to the doctrine of the Church’s independency, he proposed there should be “expressions as full as possible disowning the validity of the Lay Act with regard to conscience, and protesting against what had been done in this matter as unfit to pass into a precedent.” As to prayers for the reigning family, so strongly objected to by Kettlewell, he did not regard them as obliging a separation. He took, he says in obscure language, the right of public offices to belong to governors who might _bona fide_ differ in opinion from their subjects, and, notwithstanding, be included by them in their intercessions. He did not mean that men might own those opinions as true which they believed false, yet they might let them pass as the sense of the community of which they were members. At the beginning Dodwell suggested, if the reconciliation could be effected, that the remaining deprived Bishops should “hold their places, with a third part of the profits, without taking the oaths;” and in the end, “If you will do nothing on your part to qualify you for union with us, our fathers will have performed their part, and you alone must be answerable for the consequences of it.”[466]