Holy Willie's Prayer

Burns believed that John Calvin's doctrine of predestination, whether to salvation or damnation, made people morally reckless.

It is this last tendency in particular, and the more general theological and moral sterility embodied in much of the teachings of the Kirk, that he lampoons very effectively in this work.

Holy Willie's self-righteousness and judgmentalism are skillfully alternated with tales of his own womanising, boozing, and other moral transgressions.

Fisher conceived a dislike for Gavin Hamilton, a local lawyer,[4] landlord and the collector of stent{{explain|date=July 2020} {https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/stent_n2_v2}, administering the collection of poor relief within the parish,[5] [4] who also happened to be a close friend of Burns'.

Burns' commentary appears[citation needed] in an early manuscript of the poem and is often printed with the poem in modern editions: Holy Willie was a rather oldish bachelor elder, in the parish of Mauchline, and much and justly famed for that polemical chattering which ends in tippling orthodoxy, and for that spiritualized bawdry which refines to liquorish devotion.