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. [Sidenote: ANGLICAN CRITICS.]