een the experiences and ideas of these two religious teachers.
Enough, however, is presented to show that this spiritual leader in
England was distinctly a debtor to the Teutonic seer who died the same
year in which the former was born. Fox himself never mentions Boehme
by name, nor does he ever refer to the little sect of "Behmenists,"
which, springing into existence contemporaneously with the birth of the
Quaker movement, had an interesting, though short-lived, history; but a
number of the followers of Fox went aggressively into the lists against
their puny rival.

The so-called "sect of Behmenists" is thus described by Richard Baxter:
"The fifth sect are the Behmenists whose opinions go much toward the
way of the former [the Quakers] for the sufficiency of the Light of
Nature, Inward Light, the salvation of the Heathen as well as
Christians, and a dependence on 'revelations.' But they are fewer in
number, and seem to have attained to greater Meekness and conquest of
passions than any of the rest. Their doctrines are to be seen in Jacob
Behmen's Books, by him that hath nothing else to do, than to bestow a
great deal of time to understand him that was not willing to be easily
understood!"[59]

"The chiefest" of this "sect of Behmenists," Baxter says, was Dr. John
Pordage. Pordage was born in 1607; was curate in 1644 of St.
Lawrence's in Reading; was made rector of the Church in Bradfield late
in 1646; was charged in 1651 with heresies, comprised in nine articles,
consisting apparently of a sort of mystical pantheism. He was at first
acquitted, but was later charged again with heresies on these nine
counts, with fifty-six more, and was deprived of his rectory in 1655.
He valiantly defended himself in a book with the title, _Truth
appearing through the Clouds of Undeserved Scandel_, and in other
publications, and after the Restoration he was reinstated. As the
Behmenists were definitely attacked by the Quaker, John Anderdon, in
1661, it is to be inferred that they existed as a society at least as
early as the {228} Restoration, though the movement became much more
prominent in the 'seventies, when Pordage discovered a remarkable woman
named Jane Leade, and they "agreed to wait together in prayer and pure
dedication." Jane Leade, whose maiden name was Jane Ward, was born of
a good English family in 1623. She was a psychopathic child, and as a
young girl "heard miraculous voices" which led her to devote herself to