His _Retired Man's Meditations_ had not yet been published.

Such Vanists, therefore, as there were in 1654 must have imbibed their knowledge of them from Sir Henry's conversation or indirectly.

Among these Baxter mentions Peter Sterry, one of Cromwell's favourite preachers, and afterwards known as a mystic on his own 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.