Author: OSWALD (James):
Title: An Appeal to Common Sense in Behalf of Religion. The Second Edition.
Description: London: Printed by J. Hughs; And sold by J. Wilkie, 1768. 8vo, 205 x 123 mms., pp. viii, 390, contemporary calf, red leather label; all leaves before title-page removed, slight foxing of title-page, joints very slightly cracked (but firm), top and base of spine slightly chipped, corners worn, but a good copy. Oswald (1703 - 1793) was minister of the parish at Dunnet in Caithness, Scotland, where he served from 1728 until he was translated in 1748 to Methven. He was at one time considered for the chair of ecclesiastical history at Glasgow, but the post went to William Wight. The present book was by far Oswald's most substantial production. Oswald argues that common sense, which he thought needed not to be defined or analyzed, is more-or-less an epistemological given and will lead to exact knowledge of everything from physics to metaphysics. He published the work anonymously, but he was quickly identified as the author. It attracted appreciative reviews in the Monthly Review, Critical Review, and Göttingische Anzeigenm. "Oswald shared many of Hume's reservations about the power of reasoning, but considered common sense a universal, God-given remedy which could not be impugned without undermining sense and sanity, morals and society. This common sense was beyond any need of analysis: it was found in the same persons of judgement and authority as formed the mainstay of Scottish parish management. Oswald found nothing problematic in ascribing to a direct deliverance of our common human reason or cognitive faculty a knowledge of the maxims of both logic and metaphysics, the principles of natural and moral philosophy, the necessities of mathematics, the contingencies of human existence, and the existence, power, and attributes of deity" (ODNB),

Keywords: common sense religion prose Scottish Enlightenment


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