The events of this gothic classic are narrated from two perspectives. In the first part of the novel, an editor contextualizes the document we read in the second part by recounting from “history, justiciary records, and tradition” the century-old story of how the Laird of Dalcastle's line ended with the murder of his oldest son George Colwan by George's brother or half-brother Robert Wringhim, who disappears before he can be brought to justice. The story's “editor” then reprints a found manuscript in which we read the “private memoirs and confessions” of the likely murderer, the “justified sinner” of the novel's title. Robert Wringhim is named after the Calvinist minister who has assured him that he is “a justified person, adopted among the number of God's children … and that no bypast transgression, nor any future act … could be instrumental in altering the decree” (115), and his narrative recounts how, on the day on which he has become convinced of his salvation, he meets a mysterious stranger called Gil-Martin. Impressing upon him the truth of this Antinomian doctrine of a predestined “elect” status that Wringhim has learned from his minister (and possible biological father), and thus liberating him from the possibility of jeopardizing his salvation through wrongdoing, Gil-Martin encourages Wringhim to consider himself exempted from such moral prohibitions as would prevent his murdering of his worldly (half-?) brother George Colwan.