Since Steele forms a continuing theological link with the faithful General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland (1638-1649), this book is of great importance.

Steele held to the attainments of the second (or covenanted) Reformation which gave us the Solemn League and Covenant and the Westminster Standards -- and other Covenanters who follow in this train (along with the Scottish Covenanters, like Rutherford and Gillespie) are sometimes derisively branded as "Steelites" or "Cameronians."

Stewart notes that "this autobiography gives us a great deal of information about Steele's life and thought, but the material is not well organized historically because Steele was using this work as an apology rather than a strict autobiography. In his reminiscences (p. 151) Steele likens himself to "Old Morality" who in Sir Walter Scott's Tales of My Landlord went around with chisel and mallet in hand renewing the tombstone inscriptions on the graves of Scottish martyrs of the 17th century" (A Brief History of the Reformed Presbytery, p. 2).

In the preface Steele himself writes,