Before the Restoration there appeared a book on practical piety, which attained to an extraordinary degree of popularity. Every one has heard of the Whole Duty of Man; and most people given to religious reading have met with a treatise bearing that title; probably on examination it has proved to be what is entitled, the New Whole Duty of Man, a work proceeding on different principles from the original treatise—only the name of which it bears, only the form of which it imitates.[452] The original treatise, from the pen of an anonymous author,[453] bears a commendatory letter, written by Dr. Hammond, a circumstance which alone would suggest our ranking it amongst the productions of the Anglican school of theology. Its contents justify our doing so. It proceeds upon the theory, so largely illustrated by Thorndike, that by baptism men are brought into a gracious covenant with God; and that men become, not by merit, but by mercy, entitled to the blessings promised in the Gospel. A Christian life is the fulfilment of vows and obligations incurred in baptism. The book recognizes the doctrines of the Trinity, the Divinity of our Lord, the Atonement, and other related truths under Anglican forms of expression; but the stress of the work, indeed every page, except a few at the beginning, consists in an inculcation of human duty, considered under a threefold aspect—so common once in the pulpits of the Establishment—our duty towards God, our duty towards ourselves, and our duty towards one another. All the precepts of devotion, of virtue, and of beneficence are ranged under these heads. The great motives to godliness and goodness are not overlooked; but the proportion in which they are exhibited is very small compared with the space allotted to a prescriptive treatment of the subject. Of the fulness and variety of the practical advice given no one can complain; but the scanty reference to the distinctive doctrines of the Gospel, will be acknowledged by most Divines as a serious defect. The defect is explained, but not justified by the circumstance, that the book is a reaction against a theological tendency, needing to be checked—“the fanatics were shamefully regardless of good works, and preached up faith as all-sufficient.”

The Whole Duty of Man has been more condemned and more praised than it deserves. It presents a large amount of moral advice, but it lacks the main motive power which produces Christian virtue; and as to style, it is hard and unattractive from beginning to end, utterly lacking tenderness, and exhibiting practical religion only in a dry light.

Some of the Anglican Divines zealously devoted themselves to Biblical criticism. In the matter of exegesis, the Puritans achieved much; but they looked with suspicion upon all attempts to amend the sacred text. In this department, certain of their theological opponents laid their own age and posterity under immense obligation. Bryan Walton, perhaps, is not to be numbered with Anglicans; and amongst his most efficient helpers, was Lightfoot, more of a Latitudinarian than an Anglican,—but Castell and Pocock, Herbert Thorndike, and Alexander Huish, if not Thomas Hyde and Samuel Clark,[454] all of them eminent scholars, were more or less Anglican, certainly they were all Episcopalian, in their views; and it is to them, assisted by Oliver Cromwell, who permitted the paper for the purpose to be imported duty free, that we owe the English Polyglott,—which competent judges have pronounced superior to its more splendid predecessors, published on the Continent. Castell was enthusiastically devoted to critical studies, to which he sacrificed his property, his time, and his energies, with small reward, in the way of Church preferment. His Lexicon Heptaglotton is a monument of astonishing learning, and worthy of being associated with his friend’s Polyglott Bible.

After the Restoration, an idea was entertained of printing the famous Alexandrian MS., which had been sent as a present to Charles I. from the Greek Patriarch Cyrillus; and the editorship was to have been entrusted to Dr. Smith, an Oxford scholar, to whom Charles II. promised a Canonry at Windsor or Westminster for his labour; but the design was abandoned. Dr. John Fell, Bishop of Oxford, published, in 1675, an edition of the Greek New Testament, with various readings, taken from Walton and others; his object being to show the substantial correctness of the received text, and how little its integrity is affected by the numerous lections accumulated by an industrious collation of MSS.

To these critics must be added the well-known commentator Dr. Hammond, who, instead of following the Fathers and the Reformers in their schemes of mystical interpretation, struck out a path for himself, and sought to illustrate the grammatical sense of the sacred writings. He studied the Hellenistic dialect, compared Greek MSS., examined ancient manners and customs, and employed the opinions of the Gnostics to elucidate references in the Epistles to early heresies. This is very remarkable in an Anglican Divine, and it indicates what some who sympathized with him in other respects might have regarded as a rationalistic tendency—certainly they would have so regarded it in any one not belonging to themselves. Hammond’s Paraphrase and Annotations, published in 1659, may be taken as constituting an epoch in the history of exegesis; the more so on account of his influence, for his name stood so high with the Episcopalian clergy, “that he naturally turned the tide of interpretation his own way.”[455]