APPENDIX BIOGRAPHY OF JOHN NEWTON
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He was born in London in 1725.
He was an only child – his father was a sea captain.
His mother was a Dissenter with Puritan a background.
He was taught by his mother to read Scripture and memorise catechism and hymns.
He attended a Congregational Independent church with his mother.
She died when he was just seven years of age.
Between the ages of 11 and 17 he accompanied his father on five sea voyages
learning seamanship.
His stepmother let him please himself and he often found himself in trouble.
During this time of his life he alternated trouble with strong attempts to live a
Christian life and would then pray and read Christian literature and even write diaries
of his spiritual life.
When aged 17, his father, now retired from the sea, arranged for John to be a slave
overseer in Jamaica.
John had met a Mary Catlett from Kent and fell head over heels in love and missed
his ship to Jamaica.
His father subsequently signed John on as a common sailor for a month’s voyage.
This was the beginning of a smoking, swearing immoral young man who found the
flesh pots of Venice attractive.
On his return journey, Newtown dreamed he had forsaken God’s mercy. Then for a
few weeks he turned to his mother’s God.
On 1 March 1744 Newton was press-ganged as a crewman on the Navy ship the
“Harwich”.
Here he forsook his religious background, and persuaded another Christian to
abandon his faith.
Jumping ship to be closer to Mary, he was caught and dragged back and flogged
with the cat-o’-nine-tails.
He was transferred to another ship the ‘Greyhound’ – a slave ship.
He was awakened from his immoral life by finding the book “Imitation of Christ” by
Thomas a Kempis.
Then on a slave run on 21 March 1748 the ship began to split during a storm.
Newton felt he was too great a sinner to find the forgiveness of God, yet as the
situation with the ship worsened, he clung to the grace revealed in Scripture and
prayed his first prayer in years.
He went back to his old ways and then became extremely ill while in Sierra Leone.
While realising that he had let the Saviour down yet again, he poured out his heart to
God.
While now a Christian he became the captain of a slave trading ship.
He married Mary on 1 February 1750.
While captaining several slave ships, he would pray for the slaves.
Another ship’s captain Alexander Clunie encouraged him in the Christian way.
John Newton then forsook the sea and became a ‘Tide Surveyor’ in Liverpool.
He was a friend of George Whitfield and began to emulate his friend even in
preaching.
He tried for seven years from 1757 to 1764 to become an ordained minister of the
Church of England.
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Then through a friend’s influence he was ordained a curate at Olney, in
Buckinghamshire.
He wrote the autobiography of his spiritual journey in 1764 – “An Authentic Narrative
of Some Remarkable and Interesting Particulars in the Life of ******”
About this time he began to write hymns.
From 1767 he was a close friend of William Cowper the poet and hymn-writer who
had serious mental instability.
Newton published “Olney Hymns” which included some of Cowper’s hymns. It also
included Newton’s famous hymn “Amazing Grace” which was written to accompany
a sermon on grace.
In 1779 he accepted the appointment to St. May Woolnoth church in London.
Over the fireplace in his study were these words “Since thou was precious in my
sight, thou has been honourable (Isa 18:4), BUT Thou shalt remember that thou wast
a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee (Deut
15:15).
He wrote the epitaph that is now on his gravestone – “John Newton, clerk, 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 laboured to destroy”.
Bibliography: Christian History & Biography Magazine Issue 81 Winter Issue 2004