John Anderdon, an interesting Quaker pamphleteer, born in 1624, convinced of the Truth of the Quaker Message by the preaching of Francis Howgil in 1658, and for many years a prisoner for his faith, for which he finally died in prison, furnishes in his attack on the "Behmenists" in 1661 the earliest data available for an estimate of their views and practices.[68] The writer has evidently read the works of Jacob Boehme, or at least some of them, and he contends that the "Behmenists" whom he is attacking have failed to understand the writings of their master and have never fathomed "the tendencie of his spirit": "The Conclusion which you have drawn to yourselves from his Writings will not profit you; neither doth it make you any jot the more excellent, that ye can talk much of him and his Books and Writings, being not come to the right Spirit in which is life, which brings men out of dead Forms."[69] His main criticism of the little sect is that its members make use of "Mediums and borrowed Instruments for the conveyance of God's Grace and Virtue into the Soul,"[70] and that they have "not come to the Light which gives {232} a true understanding of the things of God," though he admits that there "was sometime" in them "a hungering and thirsting after Righteousness."[71] These "Mediums" are evidently the Water of Baptism and the Bread and Wine of the Supper--"Ordinances," he says, "as you call them."[72] It would seem from this Quaker Pamphlet that the "Behmenists" under review were much like the followers of Fox, except only that they continued to use the sacraments. This use of "Mediums" seemed to him indicate that they were "out of the Light" and "trying to _cover_ the serpent's head," instead of stamping on it, but Anderdon would not have written his _Blow at Babel_ if he had not been impressed with the general marks of likeness in other respects between the "Behmenists" and his own people.