In the preface to a volume of sixty-eight letters, from which the following are taken, addressed by Mr. Newton to Mr. Coffin, the interesting circumstances under which the correspondence originated are thus referred to. Both Mr. and Mrs. Coffin were first awakened to a sense of the importance of vital religion by the perusal of some of Mr. Newton's works. Under much religious concern, though personally unknown to the author of these volumes, they were led at once to seek counsel from him, stating, without reserve, the new position in which they found themselves. This communication led to a correspondence and a friendship which lasted until Mr. Newton's death.
He was a strong support of the Evangelicals in the Church of England, and was a friend of the dissenting clergy as well as of the ministry of his own church.
He was the author of many hymns, including "Amazing Grace".
John Henry Newton was an English Anglican clergyman and former slave-ship captain. He was the author of many hymns, including "Amazing Grace".
Sailing back to England in 1748 aboard the merchant ship, he experienced a spiritual conversion in the Greyhound, which was hauling a load of beeswax and dyer's wood. The ship encountered a severe storm off the coast of Donegal and almost sank. Newton awoke in the middle of the night and finally called out to God as the ship filled with water. It was this experience which he later marked as the beginnings of his conversion to evangelical Christianity. As the ship sailed home, Newton began to read the Bible and other religious literature. By the time he reached Britain, he had accepted the doctrines of Evangelical Christianity.
He became well-known as an evangelical lay minister, and applied for the Anglican priesthood in 1757, although it was more than seven years before he was eventually accepted and ordained into the Church of England.
Newton joined English abolitionist William Wilberforce, leader of the Parliamentary campaign to abolish the slave trade, and lived to see the passage of the Slave Trade Act 1807.
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