Fideli certa merces.
And, alongst the head, it is the same as given in the present edition
of the work. I altered the title to A Self-justified Sinner, but my
booksellers did not approve of it; and, there being a curse pronounced
by the writer on him that should dare to alter or amend, I have let it
stand as it is. Should it be thought to attach discredit to any
received principle of our Church, I am blameless. The printed part ends
at page 201 and the rest is in a fine old hand, extremely small and
close. I have ordered the printer to procure a facsimile of it, to be
bound in with the volume. [v. Frontispiece.]
With regard to the work itself, I dare not venture a judgment, for I do
not understand it. I believe no person, man or woman, will ever peruse
it with the same attention that I have done, and yet I confess that I
do not comprehend the writer's drift. It is certainly impossible that
these scenes could ever have occurred that he describes as having
himself transacted. I think it may be possible that he had some hand in
the death of his brother, and yet I am disposed greatly to doubt it;
and the numerous traditions, etc. which remain of that event may be
attributable to the work having been printed and burnt, and of course
the story known to all the printers, with their families and gossips.
That the young Laird of Dalcastle came by a violent death, there
remains no doubt; but that this wretch slew him, there is to me a good
deal. However, allowing this to have been the case, I account all the
rest either dreaming or madness; or, as he says to Mr. Watson, a
religious parable, on purpose to illustrate something scarcely
tangible, but to which he seems to have attached great weight. Were the
relation at all consistent with reason, it corresponds so minutely with
traditionary facts that it could scarcely have missed to have been
received as authentic; but in this day, and with the present
generation, it will not go down that a man should be daily tempted by
the Devil, in the semblance of a fellow-creature; and at length lured
to self-destruction, in the hopes that this same fiend and tormentor
was to suffer and fall along with him. It was a bold theme for an
allegory, and would have suited that age well had it been taken up by
one fully qualified for the task, which this writer was not. In short,
we must either conceive him not only the greatest fool, but the
greatest wretch, on whom was ever stamped the form of humanity; or,
that he was a religious maniac, who wrote and wrote about a deluded
creature, till he arrived at that height of madness that he believed
himself the very object whom he had been all along describing. And, in
order to escape from an ideal tormentor, committed that act for which,
according to the tenets he embraced, there was no remission, and which
consigned his memory and his name to everlasting detestation.