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Holy Willie's Prayer is a poem by Robert Burns. It was written in 1785 and first printed anonymously in an eight-page pamphlet in 1789.〔Daiches, David (1952). Robert Burns. London: G. Bells〕 It is considered the greatest of all Burns' satirical poems, one of the finest satires by any poet, and a withering attack on religious hypocrisy.() It is written in the Scots language, but is accessible to most modern English readers. ==Analysis== The poem is an attack on the bigotry and hypocrisy of some members of the Kirk (Church), as told by the (fictional) self-justifying prayer of a (real) kirk elder, Holy Willie. Throughout the poem, Holy Willie displays his hypocrisy by justifying his own transgressions while simultaneously asking God to judge harshly and show no mercy to his fellow transgressors. Burns used the example of Holy Willie to make the point that the Calvinist theology underpinning the entire Kirk was equally hypocritical. The Kirk was still a powerful moral force in Burns' day, and one which he believed he had a justified grievance against. Burns felt that belief in predestination, whether to salvation or damnation, could make people morally reckless, because their salvation was believed to rest, not on their own moral actions but on the "election" to salvation by an inscrutable God. He observed that belief in predestination, particularly to salvation, could have the additional tendency to make people insufferably self-righteous. It is this last tendency in particular, and the more general theological and moral sterility embodied in much of the teachings of the contemporary Kirk, that he rails against very effectively in this work. Willie's soapy sanctimony is alternated with his self-justifying tales of his own fornication and other transgressions with very great skill. The characters are drawn from real life, with no names being changed. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Holy Willie's Prayer」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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