The Conversion of ‘Amazing Grace’ Writer John Newton, March 10, 1748
n his later years as the pastor at Olney church, John Newton said, “Let me not fail to praise that grace that could pardon such sins as mine”. A former slave trader and a cruel reprobate, the redeemed man who authored the beloved hymn, ‘Amazing Grace’, became an epitome of the principle Jesus taught us in Luke 7:47, that “those who have been forgiven much, love much”.
John Newton (1725-1807), memorialized in a stained glass window in the church he pastored: St. Peter and Paul Church, Olney, Buckinghamshire, England
Newton’s story is a familiar one for the time. After the death of his mother, he was sent to sea at age eleven, being apprenticed on one of his father’s ships. At sea Newton spent his young life in the isolated, vast and often cruel world of maritime trade. There, by his own admission, he learned and practiced every form of profane conduct. At eighteen he was unwillingly pressed into service in the Royal Navy and after attempting to desert, he was arrested, flogged, and relieved of his post. He was then transferred to a merchant vessel headed for Africa where his fortunes plummeted even further. Falling out with the trader who was transporting him, Newton became enslaved himself, becoming the tormented plaything of the trader’s African wife and as he himself wrote “a servant of slaves in Africa.”
A cutaway model of a 1700s slaving ship in the Middle Passage, much like what John Newton would have been aboard
Tensions aboard ships often ran high, with crowded conditions and unscrupulous sailors
He escaped this predicament by joining the crew of a slave ship where his physical condition improved but his conscience decayed yet more. Thus, barely twenty years of age, Newton was witness and perpetrator in man-stealing and the callous transportation of human souls from Africa across the ocean to English colonies in the Caribbean and North America. His family and friends back home were grieved by his behavior and his life—once dedicated to the principles of Christ in childhood—that was now given over to impulse and ambition. Newton later wrote:
Bringing a new load on board a slave ship
“The troubles and miseries . . . were my own. I brought them upon myself by forsaking [God’s] good and pleasant paths and choosing the way of transgressors which I found very hard; they led to slavery, contempt, famine and despair.”
Sketch of the layout of a French slave ship of Newton’s era, the Marie Séraphique
He became so depressed at such work that he thought to end his life, but the memory of his mother’s teachings and love for a sweetheart back home restrained him; he would later find such restraint a mercy intended to save his life for better work.
Leaving Africa on a work trip aboard a slave ship bound for the American colonies, Newton found a copy of Thomas à Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ and, to pass the time, began to read it with indifference until he was startled at the thought of, “What if these things should be true?” That was the evening of March 9, 1748. In the early dawn of the next morning on the 10th, a vicious gale struck his ship. Newton writes:
A 1441 edition of Thomas à Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ, originally written in Latin
“I went to bed in my usual indifference, but was awakened by a violent sea which broke on us. Much of it came down below and filled the cabin where I lay. This alarm was followed by a cry that the ship was going down. We had immediate recourse to the pumps, but the water increased against all our efforts, Almost every passing wave broke over my head. I expected that every time the vessel descended into the sea, she would rise no more. I dreaded death now, and my heart foreboded the worst, if the Scriptures which, I had long since opposed, were true. . . I cried to the Lord for mercy but was instantly struck with what mercy can there be for me? The ship’s chief blasphemer, the loudest swearer, the man who mocked the Lord’s existence. What mercy can there be for me?”
An English ship is overcome by a storm
To the shock of this seasoned man of the sea, Newton’s vessel—or what remained of it—remained afloat. They landed in Ireland and there he went to the nearest church and “engaged to be the Lord’s forever, and only His.” As many Christians can attest, while the soul’s quickening may occur in a dramatic fashion, one’s return to Christ can be a slow and meandering process of trial and repentance. Newton’s was the same, for after this fateful saving of his life he began to read the New Testament, to pray and refrain from profanity, but continued on in his employment as a slave trader. He later wrote:
“How faint and wavering were my first returns to Thee! What a poor creature I am in myself, incapable of standing a single hour without continual fresh supplies of strength and grace from the fountain-head.”
The village of Olney, Buckinghamshire, England on the bank of the River Great Ouse, with the spire of St. Peter and Paul Church where Newton pastored
Newton would return home and go on to marry the love of his life, Mary Catlett, and together they grew in love for the word of God, a love that he said came to perpetually inflame his heart. It also brought him to despise his mode of employment, although most of the people in England—sheltered from witnessing its cruel mechanics—saw the slave trade as a very legitimate and rewarding business. Newton prayed for the Lord to provide a different path for him to support his family and the Lord answered, in a fashion as peculiar as it was irreversible. He suffered a stroke while waiting on the fitting of one of his ships for another voyage to Africa, and the complications from it led to his resigning from the trade for good.
A page from Olney Hymns—published in 1779—showing ‘Amazing Grace’
The church and churchyard of St. Peter and Paul Church, Olney, Buckinghamshire, England
Amidst the peace prescribed for a complete convalescence, Newton felt himself called to the vocation that had once been his heart’s greatest desire as a boy at his mother’s knee—to become a preacher of the good news of Christ and Christ crucified for sinners. Thus the reprobate became a pastor, and he who had once hunted flesh for sale became a seeker of souls for salvation. God blessed Newton with a growing congregation, talent for writing many religious works, friends such as William Cowper who aided him in the writing of hymns for their services, and a reach far beyond the little hamlet of Olney where he ministered.
William Cowper (1731-1800)—friend, parishioner, and fellow hymn-writer with Newton
The vicarage at Olney, where the Newton family lived
In 1780 John Newton was called to become minister at St. Mary Woolnoth in London. “London is the last situation I should have chosen for myself,” Newton said, yet he courageously took on his place there in one of the most debauched cities of its time. Here Newton was sought out by an old acquaintance: the very young, dazzlingly-gifted, freshly-minted Member of Parliament, William Wilberforce. Newton had been Wilberforce’s pastor back in Olney when he was a boy and now, as Newton had experienced himself, Wilberforce was enduring a torturously slow drawing near to Christ after having abandoned the faith in his teen years. “I trust God is with me,” Wilberforce wrote to Newton after they reconnected, “but He must ever keep beside me, for I fall the moment I am left to myself.”
William Wilberforce (1759-1833)
The exterior of St. Mary Woolnoth in London
The interior of St. Mary Woolnoth in London
Under Newton’s mentorship—one that lasted for the next twenty-two years, only ending with Newton’s death—Wilberforce became a born-again believer and in due time the slave trade’s greatest opponent. Together these two men, along with a devout cohort of admirable comrades, labored for decades to end not only the slave trade—for which they are so rightly remembered—but the moral decay of their fellow Englishmen. A truly Christian country, they argued, would not be so callous to the commands of Christ as to commit such atrocities as occurred every day on slave ships and in city slums. Their aim was not only the abolition of slavery but of godlessness in all its forms.
Newton in his older years as a minister
The official medallion of the British Anti-Slavery Society, designed by Josiah Wedgwood, 1795
John Newton was granted the grace to live long enough to see the year 1807, when William Wilberforce’s now almost ancient bill to end the slave trade was passed by a strong majority into English law. As of May 1807, the trade was made illegal throughout the British Empire and in December of the same year, Newton went to be with his Lord. When the College of New Jersey (Princeton) sent word that they had given Newton an honorary Doctor of Divinity for his religious work, he commented that “the dreary coast of Africa had been his university” and that he would never accept any diploma “except from the poor blacks.” Newton remained amazed until his last days at what God had done for him by chasing after him when he had wandered so far from what was right. He wrote,
“I can see no reason why the Lord singled me out for mercy . . . unless it was to show, by one astonishing instance, that with Him ‘nothing is impossible’.”
A scene at the port in Hull, Yorkshire, England (birthplace of William Wilberforce) where the Wilberforce monument dominates the landscape
In his sermons Newton was want to pause and utter, as if moved by sudden adoration, “Jesus Christ is precious.”
In his epitaph, Newton summed up his life in these words:
“John Newton, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy.”
Tomb of John Newton and his wife, Mary, in the churchyard of his early pastorate, St. Peter and Paul Church, Olney, Buckinghamshire, England
Image Credits: 1 Stained glass memorial (wikipedia.org) 2 Cutaway model of a slaver (wikipedia.org) 3 Tensions in the hold (wikipedia.org) 4 Loading a ship (wikipedia.org) 5 Layout of a slaver (wikipedia.org) 6 The Imitation of Christ (wikipedia.org) 7 Shipwreck (wikipedia.org) 8 River and church, Olney (wikipedia.org) 9 ‘Amazing Grace’ (wikipedia.org) 10 Church of Sts. Mary and John (wikipedia.org) 11 William Cowper (wikipedia.org) 12 Olney vicarage (wikipedia.org) 13 William Wilberforce (wikipedia.org) 14 Church of St. Mary Woolnoth, exterior (wikipedia.org) 15 Church of St. Mary Woolnoth, interior (wikipedia.org) 16 Minister Newton (wikipedia.org) 17 Abolition medallion (wikipedia.org) 18 Wilberforce Monument (wikipedia.org) 19 Newton tomb (wikipedia.org)