Religion in James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner and J.G. Lockhart’s Adam Blair
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:1-2). Given the highly charged religious environment of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Scotland, the above passage must have been discussed many times in Christian circles then. Some of the Reformed faithful, perhaps, took the first part too seriously, to the expense of any normal sense of morality, while others might have forgotten their freedom from condemnation and fallen into despair. Either way, both views pervert the orthodox Calvinistic view of guilt laid out in the teachings of the doctrine’s namesake and the standard confessions of the church at the time.
While they may not make very good theology, these dogmas at least provided material for two nineteenth-century character studies, James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner and J.G. Lockhart’s Adam Blair. Written when much (but not all) of post-Enlightenment Scotland had taken an anti-clerical, anti-religious stance, these novels explore the faith of the previous generation and how fundamentalist Presbyterianism may have gone horribly wrong. The protagonists of each book react in completely opposite ways to their sinful acts; Lockhart’s eponymous character has a nearly legalistic view of his own sin, while Hogg’s Robert Wringhim follows a more antinomian path. Oddly enough, it is the former who ends up redeemed and the other damned, but their respective journeys toward those ends follow much of the same path.
Robert Wringhim, Hogg’s cen...
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Hogg, James. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Ed. J.I. Packer et. al. London: HarperCollins Religious, 2002.
Lockhart, J.G. Some Passages in the Life of Mr. Adam Blair, Minister of the Gospel at Cross-Meikle. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1963.
Mack, Douglas S. “‘The Rage of Fanaticism in the Former Days’: James Hogg’s Confession of a Justified Sinner and the Controversy over Old Mortality.” Nineteenth Century Scottish Fiction: Critical Essays. Ed. Ian Campbell. Manchester: Carcanet New Press Limited, 1979. 37-50.
Richardson, Thomas C. “Character and Craft in Lockhart’s Adam Blair.” Nineteenth Century Scottish Fiction: Critical Essays. Ed. Ian Campbell. Manchester: Carcanet New Press Limited, 1979. 51-67.
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards and “The Minister’s Black Veil” by Nathaniel Hawthorne are both 1700s Puritan works of literature with similarities, as well as differences, from their theme to tone and to what type of literary work they are. Edwards and Hawthorne are both expressing the topics of how people are all sinners, especially in regards to their congregation and that questions their congregation’s faith.
A deeply pious man, John considers the Bible a sublime source of moral code, guiding him through the challenges of his life. He proclaims to his kid son, for whom he has written this spiritual memoir, that the “Body of Christ, broken for you. Blood of Christ, shed for you” (81). While John manages to stay strong in the faith and nurture a healthy relationship with his son, his relationship with his own father did not follow the same blueprint. John’s father, also named John Ames, was a preacher and had a powerful effect on John’s upbringing. When John was a child, Father was a man of faith. He executed his role of spiritual advisor and father to John for most of his upbringing, but a shift in perspective disrupted that short-lived harmony. Father was always a man who longed for equanimity and peace. This longing was displayed in his dealings with his other son, Edward: the Prodigal son of their family unit, a man who fell away from faith while at school in Germany. John always felt that he “was the good son, so to speak, the one who never left his father's house” (238). Father always watched over John, examining for any sign of heterodoxy. He argued with John as if John were Edward, as if he were trying to get Edward back into the community. Eventually, John’s father's faith begins to falter. He reads the scholarly books
Throughout Hawthorne’s short stories which examine secret sin based in Puritan societies, the protagonist, Mr. Hooper, a preacher in Milford, describes to his wife “Do not desert me though this veil must be between us here on earth” (32). Hooper who has arrived at a point where his community and wife have abandoned him while on his deathbed realizes that he is deserted because of his secret sin. This description of utter loneliness is in contrast with Hawthorne’s portrayal of Hooper, who once was a prominent priest in the Milford area. Hawthorne’s depiction of Mr. Hooper’s secret sin, taking form in the black veil alters his life indefinetely. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories, the author identifies secret sin as the cause of isolation, relationship struggles, and the community’s behavior.
Edwards, Jonathan. "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. Canada: DC Heath and Company, 1990. 584-595.
Milgrom, Jacob. “A Husband’s Pride, A Man’s Prejudice: The Public Ordeal…” Bible Review. Vol. XII. (Aug. 1996).
May, Henry F. The Recovery of American Religious History. The American Historical Review. Vol. 70, No. 1. 1964.
Reynolds, David S. Faith in Fiction: The Emergence of Religious Literature in America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981.
Lauter, Paul, Richard Yarborough, and James Kyung-Jin. Lee. "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry
It has been suggested by some scholars that one of the distinguishing features of Bonhoeffer’s theology and ethics is that he took up the theme of guilt with directness and political interest that few of his contemporaries dared to touch. While the idea of accepting guilt as an ethical concept is made most explicit in Bonhoeffer’s Ethics (particularly “History also present in Sanctorum Communion and Discipleship much earlier in his career. Therefore the idea was not a novel one and in fact was a concept that Bonhoeffer worked on throughout his career. For Bonhoeffer guilt is not merely an emotion or form of moral shame, but it comes out of a real encounter and relationship with Christ. One must confess their own guilt in order to be reconciled
In both “Roger Malvin's Burial” and “The Minister's Black Veil,” Nathaniel Hawthorne centralizes the themes of sin, guilt, and repentance. Both are very much set in terms of what defines sin and, in turn, what would constitute action leaving an opening for forgiveness, and both leave many a question unanswered in the story being told. The main question for us becomes, then, one of applicability. Does either story hold a message, if so, what? In considering the two, it may be that they do indeed hold a message, but maybe that message is not one that Hawthorne himself could ever have intended. In this paper I will deal with the themes of guilt, sin, repentance and how Hawthorne developed them in both stories.
Brewer, Nadine. "Christ, Satan, and Southern Protestantism in O'Connor's Fiction." Flannery O'Connor Bulletin 14 (1985): 103-111. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 132. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 Nov. 2013
There was a man by the name of Thomas of Elderfield who had a life full of ups and downs, but who never lost his faith in Christianity. He came from a poor family and worked his way up the social ladder to a successful business man. This climb up the social ladder was beneficial to him, but soon led to trouble as he attracted a suitor. After several years of infidelity with the suitor, Thomas’s conscious got to him and he discontinued seeing the married woman. His faith in God kept him from returning to her despite her repeated attempts at pulling him into sin. Thomas could not live with the weight of the sin on his shoulders so he went to a priest to confess what was causing him anguish and repent for his sins. “Eventually God's grace intervened and remorse stung him; so he presented himself to a priest and took his healthy advice to do proper penance for his offence,” (Malmesbury, par. 2). The woman remarried a man named George years after her first husband had passed away. In time George found out about his new wife’s previous infidelity...
Marcuse, Harold. "Translation of The Stuttgart Delaration of Guilt." 12 July 2014. 19 November 2014
A sin during the mid 1600’s is quite different than a modern one. For example, in the 17th century people believed that defying a rule of God makes the culprit worthy of being publicly shamed or even killed. Now, sin does not have nearly the same impact for if a person disobeys God they can confess to their priest and be forgiven of their sins. The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne explores the concept of sin in a Puritanical community during the mid 1600’s in Boston, Massachusetts. Here, religion is a focal point in many citizens lives and religious freedom is one of the primary reasons the puritans came to America from England. The novel begins with Hester Prynne, a single mother just being released from prison, who is seen as an adulterer.
Throughout history there have been examples of religion being regarded as traditional and of people dissenting from the traditional religion. This essay will trace the footsteps of tradition and dissent of Christianity in England between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries by looking at the statement “… a previous generation’s “dissent” itself becomes “tradition”, and a previously dominant tradition becomes dissent.” (Tradition and Dissent p72). With particular reference to the differences between Protestants and Catholics.