Excerpt from The Life of the Rev. John Newton, Rector of St. Mary Woolnoth, London: Written by Himself to A. D. 1763, and Continued to His Death in 1807
My mother Observed my early progress with peculiar pleasure, and intended, from the first, to bring me up with a view to the ministry, if it should please God to convert me by his grace, and incline my heart to the work. In my Sixth year I began to learn Latin; but before I had time to know much about it, the intended plan of my education was broken short. The Lord's designs were far beyond the views of an earthly parent: he was pleased to reserve me for unusual proof of his patience, providence and grace; and therefore overruled the purpose of my friends, by depriving me of this excellent parent when I was something under seven years old. Iwas born the 24th of July, 1725, and she died the 1lth of that month, 1732.
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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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