That though we are certain of many things, yet that Certainty is no absolute Infallibility, there still remains the possibility of our being mistaken in all matters of humane Belief and Inquiry.

Not himself a scientist he has been called "the most skillful apologist of the virtuosi" or in other words the leading propagandist for the approach of the English natural philosophers of the later 17th century. Joseph Glanvill (1636–1680) was an English writer philosopher and clergyman.