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.

Another interesting Quaker document furnishes a glimpse of the
"Behmenists" a dozen years later--at about the period when John Pordage
and Jane Leade were beginning to "wait together in prayer and pure
meditation." It is a Minute adopted by the London "Morning Meeting" of
Friends, "the 21st of ye 7th Month 1674." The occasion for action was
the reception of "an Epistle to the Behminists," written by Ralph
Frettwell of Barbadoes, at an earlier period "one of the Chief Judges
of the Court of Common-pleas" in the island. He had been stirred to
write for the same reason that impelled Anderdon, and his "Epistle"
called these partly spiritualized people, as he believed, to the fuller
Light, and warned them against the use of Baptism, and Bread and Wine,
and "the Pater Noster." The Minute of the Morning Meeting, which opens
with the words: "Deare freind R. F. in the Truth that never changeth
but changeth all who believe and obey it," records the decision of the
Meeting not to publish the Epistle, "wee haveing well weighed it in the
feare of God and in tender Care of Truth." The reason given in the
Minutes for not publishing the "Epistle" is, first, that "the writings
of J. B. reveal {233} a great mixture of light and darkness," and
indicate that he lived sometimes in the power of one and sometimes in
the power of the other, that God Himself has tried and judged the
Spirit of darkness, and that the Spirit of Light has already "come to
its own Centre and flows forth again purely"--presumably in the Quaker
movement.[73] As the Lord Himself has given judgment and has given
victory to the Principle of the Light, the publication of the "Epistle"
is unnecessary.

And, secondly, Frettwell, in calling the "Behmenists" from "the use of
Mediums," admits that at an earlier period of his life, before