Of the delicacy of taste and passion Book

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1775 Excerpt: ...and goodness of God, that virtue and and vice are essentially different, &c. by any proper medium of proof whatever; but only, if he has proved them at all, by an appeal to this principle of common fense, which is said to assure us, without reasoning, that such and such doctrines are true. v Also, though Dr. Beattie has not taken the fame large field of argument that Dr. Oswald has done, thinking probably that, after him, it was unnecessary, yet he quotes from him with respect, and no doubt with intire approbation (or why did he quote him at all?) a passage in which he not only asserts the propriety of desending primary truths on the sole authority of common sense, but vindicates the doing of it with a peculiar emphasis, and without much delicacy. And I have already shewn in what an extensive sense Dr. Oswald considers the primary truths of religion, a sense with which Dr, Beattie could not be unacquainted. Ma Dr. Dr. Beattie's quotation, in vindication of his vehemence of expression in this treatise, is as follows, p, 512. There 'is no fatisfying the demands of false 'delicacy, fays an elegant and pious au'thor, because they are not regulated by 1 any fixed standard. But a man of can'dour and judgment will allow that the bashful timidity, practised by those who put themselves on a level with the ad 'verfaries of religion, would ill become 'one who, declining all disputes, asserts 'primary truths on the authority of com'mon sense; and that whoever pleads 'the cause of religion in this way has a right to assume a firmer tone, and to 'pronounce with a more decisive air, not upon the strength of his own judgment, 'but on the reverence due from all man kind to the tribunal to which he appeals. 'O/wald's apppeal in behalf of religion, 'p. 14/ These gentlemen...