he
received the full Light, he "received light and peace" through these
external things. This seemed to the Meeting "too much giveing them
encouragement" to dwell in things which give "only drynesse and
barrenness," and they fear that "the ffoxes among them would take
advantage" of this aid and comfort.[74] It would appear that the
gravamen of the Quaker attack on the little sect was the failure of its
members to dispense with sacraments. At a later period, when the
"Philadelphian Society" was in full flower, an old-time pillar Quaker,
George Keith, then become a Churchman and "an apostate" in the eyes of
Friends, attacked the writings of Jane Leade on the ground that "she
wrote derogatory to the Humanity of Christ," _i.e._ the historical
Christ. Francis Lee took up vigorously the defence, and told George
Keith that he himself had taught again and again the same principle of
inward Light and inward Religion, that he had never yet publicly
renounced these early ideas of his, and that he of all men ought to
understand the meaning of a Christ within and of a "Still Eternity."[75]

Traces of Boehme's influence appear in the terms and {234} ideas of
many English writers during the period under consideration, besides
those specifically mentioned. Sir Isaac Newton read Boehme's books
with great appreciation and meditated upon those strange accounts of
the invisible universe which underlies and is in the visible world, but
we need not take too seriously the claim of the "Behmenists" that "he
was ploughing with Behmen's heifer" when he discovered the law of
universal gravitation![76] Milton, without any doubt, had read the
German mystic's account of the eternal war between the Light Principle
and the Dark Principle, of the fall of Lucifer, of the loss of
Paradise, and of the return of man in Christ to Paradise, and there are
many passages in the great poet which look decidedly like germinations
from the seed which Boehme sowed, but we must observe caution in
tracing the origin of verses written by a poet of Milton's genius and
originality and range of knowledge. One great Englishman of a later
period, William Law, unmistakably owed to Jacob Boehme the main
influences which transformed his life, and through the pure and lucid
style of this noble English mystic of the eighteenth century, Boehme's
insights found a new interpretation and a clearer expression than he
himself or any other interpreter had been able to give them.