account. Of Sterry's preaching, already notoriously
obscure, Sir Benjamin Rudyard had said that "it was too high for this
world and too low for the other," and Baxter puns on the association
of Vane and Sterry, asking whether _Vanity_ and _Sterility_
had ever been more happily conjoined. But the sect of the VANISTS
existed perhaps mainly in Baxter's fancy.[3]

[Footnote 1: Stationers' Registers from 1644 to 1654; Baxter, 77-78;
Neal, IV. 112-113.]

[Footnote 2: Engl. Cycl. Art. _Lilly_; Stationers' Registers of
date June 10, 1653 (Gataker's Tract) and of other dates (Lilly's
Almanacks).]

[Footnote 3: Baxter, 74-76; Milton Papers by Nickolls, 78-79;
Wood's Ath. III, 578 et seq. and IV. 136-138.]

QUAKERS OR FRIENDS:--Who can think of the appearance of this sect in
English History without doing what the sect itself would forbid, and
reverently raising the hat? And yet in 1654 this was the very sect of
sects. It was about the Quakers that there had begun to be the most
violent excitement among the guardians of social order throughout the
British Islands.--It was then six or seven years since they had first
been heard of in any distinct way, and four since they had received
the name QUAKERS. A Derbyshire Justice of the Peace, it is said,
first invented that name for them, because they seemed to be fond of
the text Jer. v. 22, and had offended him by addressing it to himself
and a brother magistrate: "Fear ye not me? saith the Lord; will ye
not tremble at my presence?" But Robert Barclay's account of the
origin of the name in his _Apology for the Quakers_ (1675) is
probably more correct, though not inconsistent. He says it arose from
the fact that, in the early meetings of "The Children of the Light,"
as they first called themselves, violent physical agitations were not
unfrequent, and conversions were often signalized by that
accompaniment. There was often an "inward travail" in some one
present; "and from this inward travail, while the darkness seeks to
obscure the light, and the light breaks through the darkness, which
it will always do if the soul gives not its strength to the
darkness, there will be such a painful travail found in the soul that
will even work upon the outward man, so that often-times, through the
working thereof, the body will be greatly shaken, and many groans and
sighs and tears, even as the pangs of a woman in travail, will lay
hold of it: yea, and this not only as to one, but ... sometimes the