Rich. Baxters apology against the modest exceptions of Mr. T. Blake and the digression…

Having thus taken the boldness to examine your Exceptions, and deliver my Reasons against some of your opinions, I do crave your favourable acceptance ⟨p. 153⟩of what I have done, and your friendly interpretation or remission of any unsavoury, words that I have let fall: And I must desire you not to suppose that I judge of all the rest of your Book, as I do o• this which I have here Replied to. I value the Wheat, while I help you to weed out the Tares. Pardon my confident Concluding you in the error, and my self in the Truth: whether it be from the convincing self-revealing nature of Light; or from the common unhappy fate of the deluded; I must leave you and others to judge by the Evidence that is in my arguments, whatever further evidence I may have my self within; doubtless the various state of Intellects, doth cause a strange variety of apprehensions, of those objects which are in themselves the same. And words be but defective signs: There is something in Sensation and Intellection, which words cannot fully show to another. It is but the Species and not the thing it self which you see in this Glass. My most exquisite description of my own Taste and the sweetness of what I taste, will not cause another to taste that sweetness. And there is somewhat like this in Intellection it self; for though I confess my self ignorant what manner of thing our Intellection will be, when we are out of the flesh; yet now me thinks I perceive that it doth in some sort participate of sense, and that vid: August. de Trinit. li. 5. c. 1. initio. Sen•io me Intelligere, is a speech not wholly void of Truth. I confess also that I should have little modesty or humility, if I should not think more highly of the understanding of your self and so many Reverend and Learned Brethren who dissent from me in several points here debated, then of mine own. But yet we must prove all things, and not so trust to other mens eyes as to shut our own▪ or refuse to give credit to our sight. They may far excel me in many other things, though they mistake in this. I remember Pauls, If we or an Angel from heaven, &c. And I remember Tertullians, Non ex personis probamus fidem, sed ex fide personas (li. Prescript. adv. haer. c. 3.) And Irenaeus his, Presbyteris adhaerere oportet qui & Apostolorum doctrinam custodiunt, & cum Presbyterit Ordine sermonem •anum custodiunt, &c. (li. 4. c. 44.)