John Newton

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For the American Civil War general, see John Newton (ACW)

Image:Newton j.jpg John Newton (July 24, 1725 – December 21, 1807) was an English slaveship master who became an Anglican clergyman after his conversion to Christianity. He is also well-known as the author of the hymn Amazing Grace .

1 Early life
2 Slave trader
3 Conversion to Christianity
4 Anglican priest
5 Abolitionist
6 Writer and hymnist
7 Final years
8 Trivia
9 References
10 External links

[edit] Early life

Newton was born in Wapping, London, the son of John Newton, a shipmaster in the Mediterranean service, and Elizabeth Newton (née Seatclife). His mother died of tuberculosis when he was a child. After two years at boarding school he went to sea with his father from 1736, and sailed with him on a total of six voyages until 1742. His father became governor of Fort York, Ontario, Canada, but was accidentally drowned in 1750.

His father had planned to send him to take up a position at a sugar plantation in Jamaica but, on his way in 1743, he was pressed into naval service, and became a midshipman aboard the HMS Harwich. Having attempted to desert, Newton was recaptured, put in irons and reduced to the rank of a common seaman, and was destined for a long voyage to the East Indies when, as his ship was getting supplies for the journey at Madeira, he was exchanged and transferred to a merchant ship engaged in the African slave trade and bound for west Africa.

[edit] Slave trader

It was six months later that he sought to stay on the coast of Guinea, with the intention of making his fortune as a trader in the islands close to Sierra Leone but, instead, became a servant and found himself brutally used by his master, suffering starvation, illness and exposure. It was this period that Newton later remembered as the time he was a "once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa." Eventually, his fortunes improved and he was found by a ship’s captain who had been asked by Newton’s father to look out for him on his next voyage.

[edit] Conversion to Christianity

Returning to England with him in 1748 aboard the Greyhound via the Atlantic triangle trade route, they encountered a severe storm, which threatened to overwhelm the ship. Newton awoke in the middle of the night and, as the vessel filled with water, prayed for God’s mercy. It was this experience which he was later to mark as the point of his conversion to Christianity. Even while the ship limped home in need of repair, and with little in the way of provisions, Newton began to read the Bible and other religious literature and, by the time they reached Britain, he no longer counted himself as an infidel. The date had been May 10, 1748, an anniversary he observed for the rest of his life. From that point on, he avoided profanity, gambling, and drinking.

Newton returned to Liverpool, England and, partly due to the influence of Joseph Manestay, a friend of his father’s, obtained a position as first mate aboard a slave trading vessel, the Brownlow, bound for the West Indies via the coast of Guinea. During the first leg of this voyage, while in west Africa (1748-49), Newton saw for the first time the inadequacy of his new spiritual life and, suffering from the effects of a violent fever, threw himself totally on the mercy of God. He was later to claim that this experience was the final turning point in his search for God, and that he knew for the first time a total peace.

After his return to England in 1750, Newton made three further voyages as master of the Duke of Argyle (1750) and the African (1752-53 and 1753-54), both slave-trading ships. It was only in 1754 that he was to hear about the Evangelical revival in England, and gave up his association with the maritime trade. He attended religious meetings where, amongst others, he heard George Whitefield and John and Charles Wesley.

[edit] Anglican priest

In 1755 Newton became tide surveyor of the port of Liverpool, again through the influence of Manestay and, in his spare time, was able to study Greek, Hebrew and Syriac. He became well-known as an evangelical lay minister, and applied for the Anglican ordained ministry in 1757, although it was more than seven years before he was eventually accepted and ordained into the Church of England. Such had been his frustration during this period of rejection that he had sought also to apply to the Methodists, Independents and Presbyterians, as well as directly to the Bishops of Chester and Lincoln and the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.

Eventually, in 1764, he was introduced by Thomas Haweis to Lord Dartmouth, who was influential in recommending Newton to the Bishop of Chester, and who had suggested him for the living of Olney, Buckinghamshire. On 29 April 1764 Newton received deacon’s orders, and finally became a priest on 17 June.

As curate of Olney, Newton was partly sponsored by the evangelical philanthropist John Thornton, who supplemented his stipend of £60 a year with £200 a year "for hospitality and to help the poor". He soon became well-known for his pastoral care, as much as for his beliefs, and his friendship with dissenters and evangelical clergy caused him to be respected by Anglicans and non-conformists alike. He was to spend sixteen years at Olney, during which time so popular was his preaching that the church had a gallery added to accommodate the large numbers who flocked to hear him.

In 1767 the poet William Cowper settled in Olney, and the result of their friendship was the Olney Hymns (London, 1779 and often), which greatly influenced English hymnology. Other well-known hymns by Newton include "Approach, My Soul, the Mercy Seat", "Come, My Soul, Thy Suit Prepare", and "Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken". Some five years later, in 1772, Thomas Scott, later to become a biblical commentator and co-founder of the Church Missionary Society, took up the curacy of the neighbouring parishes of Stoke Goldington and Weston Underwood. Newton was instrumental in converting Scott from a cynical 'career priest' to a true believer, a conversion Scott related in his spiritual autobiography The Force Of Truth (1779).

In 1779 Newton was invited by the wealthy Christian merchant John Thornton to become Rector of St Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, London, where he officiated until his death. The church had been built by Nicholas Hawksmoor in 1727 in the fashionable Baroque style. Newton then became one of only two evangelical preachers in the capital, and he soon found himself gaining in popularity amongst the growing evangelical party. He was a strong supporter of evangelicalism in the Church of England, and was a friend of the dissenting clergy as well as of the ministry of his own church.

Many young churchmen and others enquiring about their faith visited him and sought advice from him, including the great and the good of Georgian society, among them the writer and philanthropist Hannah More and the young M.P., William Wilberforce.

[edit] Abolitionist

Newton has been criticised by some modern writers for his seeming approval of slavery while, at the same time, holding to strong Christian convictions – which has often been characterised as hypocrisy. This should be seen in the light of late eighteenth-century thought: Newton was a man of his day, and his attitude was typical of that of the modern merchant of the period. At the time of his involvement in the trade he was not yet under the influence of John Wesley or the other evangelicals. He did, however, later in life deeply regret and repent of his acceptance of, and personal involvement in, the slave trade and later joined William Wilberforce in the campaign for abolition. In 1787 he wrote a tract supporting the campaign, Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade.

Among his greatest contributions to history was in 1785 encouraging Wilberforce, the newly-converted Member of Parliament for Hull, to stay in Parliament and "serve God where he was", rather than enter the ministry. Wilberforce heeded the ex-slaveship captain's advice, and spent the next five decades successfully working for the abolition of slavery in the British Empire.

[edit] Writer and hymnist

In 1767 William Cowper, the poet, who shared Newton's evangelical faith, moved to Olney. He worshipped in the church, and they were to collaborate on producing a volume of hymns, which was eventually published as Olney Hymns in 1779, having been delayed by Cowper's bout of depressive illness. The volume included Newton's well -known hymns "Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken", "How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds!", "Come, My Soul, Thy Suit Prepare", "Approach, My Soul, the Mercy-seat", and "Amazing Grace".

When Cowper died in 1800 some blamed John Newton for exacerbating the depressive illness from which Cowper had suffered, mentioning the emotionalism of Newton's evangelical preaching and Calvinist beliefs as a contributing factor of his extreme melancholy and eventual dementia. Among those who laid responsibility at Newton's door was Robert Southey, the Romantic poet, who published a Life of Cowper in 1835.

Many of Newton's (as well as Cowper's) hymns are preserved in the Sacred Harp.

[edit] Final years

Newton had married his sweetheart Mary Catlett (whom he had known since his teenage years) in 1750. After her death in 1790 he published his Letters to a Wife in 1793, in which he expressed his grief. His faculties gradually deteriorating and his sight having failed, he died on December 21, 1807. He was buried beside his wife in St Mary Woolnoth, and both bodies were reinterred at Olney in 1893. Olney has a museum to commemorate its most famous son.

[edit] Trivia

The town of Newton, Sierra Leone is named after John Newton. To this day there is a philanthropic link between John Newton's church of Olney and Newton, Sierra Leone.

In his book Bury The Chains, Adam Hochschild describes at length John Newton's time in the slave trade, and, three decades later, his very belated conversion to the abolitionist cause.

Newton was recognized for his hymns of longstanding influence by the Gospel Music Association in 1982 when he was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame.

Caryl Phillips's novel Crossing the River (1993) includes nearly verbatim excerpts from Newton's books.

[edit] References

Bennett, H.L. John Newton in Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: University Press, 1894)
Hindmarsh, D. Bruce. John Newton in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: University Press, 2004)
Hochschild, Adam. Bury the Chains, The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery (Basingstoke: Pan Macmillan, 2005)