The private memoirs and confessions of a justified sinner

¶ … Private Confessions and Memoirs

The foundations of the Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner written by James Hogg is clearly a series of contests of character, of which the narrator appallingly fails through his allowance of piety and the doctrine of predestination to guide his decisions and justify his sins. From the beginning the youth allows himself to lie, cheat and possibly steal to get his way, overcome the truth telling servant and overtake the student who is above him in knowledge and ability. Even though he agonizes over his deeds, he still naively believes that all is forgiven because he has been preordained to be among the good rather than the evil, secondary even to his dubious birth. His character is duplicitous, as on the one hand he wishes to do good and on the other believes that if he gets ahead it is justified, as he is a chosen soul.

From the moment, I conceived it decreed, not that I should be a minister of the gospel, but a champion of it, to cut off the enemies of the Lord from the face of the earth; and I rejoiced in the commission, finding it more congenial to my nature to be cutting sinners off with the sword than to be haranguing them from the pulpit, striving to produce an effect which God, by his act of absolute predestination, had for ever rendered impracticable. (Hogg 16)

The following of the character of the man is one of utter inequity to the ideas that he was taught. The contradictions of Christian teaching all play a part in his preordained downfall, as if the author intended it to be so. If there are good and bad souls in humans then why should we strive to be good on this earth if we are already either doomed or promised reward of eternal salvation?

The more I pondered on these things the more I saw of the folly and inconsistency of ministers in spending their lives striving and remonstrating with sinners in order to induce them to do that which they had it not in their power to do. Seeing that God had from all eternity decided the fate of every individual that was to be born of woman, how vain was it in man to endeavour to save those whom their Maker had, by an unchangeable decree, doomed to destruction....How much more wise would it be, thought I, to begin and cut sinners off with the sword!...Should I be honoured as an instrument to begin this great work of purification, I should rejoice in it. (16)

The narrator is answered with his recently acquired friend, a mirror of sorts who justifies the thoughts and actions of the other through knowing and agreeing with everything he says. There is clear indications that this clone of the narrator is actually the devil, attempting to bar him from prayer and logical thought and feed the violence he has unwittingly conjured up as the answer to all ills in the world.

The narrator is led to horrific acts including murder, for which he has no memory, but is the most likely culprit, having been led down the garden path by the devil to act upon the idea of predestination. The power of the devil over this ripe soul, on the precipice of becoming a known "chosen" soul but born of the good and the evil, his mother being purely good and his birth father being purely evil was complete and as the "friendship" progressed the presence of the devil became almost drug like in its intensity. "He was constant to me as my shadow, and by degrees he acquired such an ascendency over me that I never was happy out of his company, nor greatly so in it." (21) the devil, the narrators close companion uses all of his whiles to convince the narrator to commit murder, first murdering a great preacher and then following it with murdering his father and brother to regain his forsaken fortune.

At no point in the process of character contests does the narrator actually regain his sense of self, or his sense of guilt for actions done with guile, rather than with the convincing of the devil that he is righteous in his actions. The devil tells him that all of his actions are justified and he believes the words and acts upon them.

These people are your greatest enemies; they would rejoice to see you annihilated. and, now that you have taken up the Lord's cause of being avenged on His enemies, wherefore spare those that are your own as well as His? Besides, you ought to consider what great advantages would be derived to the cause of righteousness and truth were the estate and riches of that opulent house in your possession, rather than in that of such as oppose the truth and all manner of holiness." (30)