Excerpt from The Works of the Rev. John Newton, Vol. 1 of 6
The first of the following letters is so well adapted an int duction to the rest, that to trouble the reader With a long preface would be quite needless and impertinent. I will therefore detain him from entering upon the delightful and instructive relation which the following sheets present him with, little longer than while I assure him, that the marraq tire is quite genuine, and that the following letteis were written to' me at my request. Some verbal relations of the facts awakened my curiosity to see a more connected ac count of them, which the author very obligingly consented to, having at that time no intention of its being made pub lic. But the repeated solicitations of friends have at last prevailed: and indeed the publication is the more needful, as several imperfect copies have been handed about, and there has been cause to think some surreptitious edition might steal through the press into the hands of the public.
I have therefore, with consent of the author, now sent these Letters abroad in their original form. They were written in haste, as letters of friendship, to gratify my curls osity; but the style, as well as the narrative itself, is so plain and easy, that corrections were thought needless. I can only add my best wishes, that the great truths they contain may prove as edifying as the facts are striking and entertaining.
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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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