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The title Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner takes its reference from a theological belief, particularly the central reformation doctrine of “justification by faith”. It concerns a strangely tormented character, Robert Wringhim, who believes he is one of the elect, but eventually murders his brother and finally takes his own life. To say that this novel has a multiplicity of interpretations is a literary commonplace. For the purposes of this paper I wish …

…James Hogg. This novel confronts issues concerning politics, statecraft, history, philosophy and religion, which are all discussed with reference to Christianity. Such an intense intellectual atmosphere which makes serious demands on the will - for what is apprehended intellectually must be lived out practically - seems to have had more perilous implications for the emotions and the imagination. Those strongly human functions when proportionately neglected produce a strange, dark mental interior of fear and unhappiness.