Baxter mentions only five, in addition to the larger religious parties. He describes the minor sects as Vanists, Seekers, Ranters, Quakers, and Behmenists. With all his power of analysis, however, he very unsatisfactorily performs his task; for it is idle to represent Vane as the founder of a sect, and the chief reason why the Kidderminster polemic placed him in this category seems to be, that he honestly disliked the man, and that he had been "a means to lessen his reputation."[391] The account of the Seekers, many of whom, according to his statement, were "Papists and Infidels," runs into that of the Ranters. The Quakers he describes as Ranters, turned from profaneness and blasphemy to asceticism. With the writings of Jacob Behmen it appears that Baxter had little acquaintance. But he mentions, as chief of the English Behmenists, one Pordage, who had "sensible communion with angels," who was acquainted with spirits "by sights and smells," who fought fiery dragons, and who saw an impression upon the wall of his house representing a coach drawn by lions and tigers, which could not be removed without pickaxes.[392] The record of such idle rumours, whilst it does not raise our opinion of Baxter as a historian of religious sects--for the man he describes seems to have been a lunatic--gives some little insight into the psychological curiosities of the times, and brings us into acquaintance with "spiritualists" of the seventeenth century. [Sidenote: _Number of Sects._] Besides Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and Quakers, there were no sects, properly so called--no groups of professing Christians distinctly organized. Socinianism, however, existed. John Biddle--who has been already noticed in connection with the proceedings of Cromwell's first Parliament--contended, at a public disputation in St. Paul's with Griffin, a Baptist minister, that Christ was not the Most High God, and this man never lost an opportunity of avowing Unitarian sentiments.[393] But he founded no party, nor are there traces of any separate congregations under the Commonwealth maintaining similar views. There was also much floating mysticism. The theology of Jacob Behmen, through an "Account of his Life and Writings," written in English, produced some effect in this country. The spiritualism of that extraordinary person--akin to the "Theologia Germanica"--anticipated in "Tauler's Sermons"--and possessing some affinity to certain Lutheran principles, fed the devotion of English transcendentalists. Notwithstanding its errors and visionary fancies, on its better side it nourished a spirit of self-abnegation, protested against formality, exposed the dangers of dogmatical dispute, opposed High Calvinism, and pronounced millenarian speculations as of little profit. And, independently of all foreign culture, mysticism, deeply rooted in humanity, grew freely on Anglo-Saxon soil; not always with quiet grace, as in the Cambridge school under the husbandry of