John Newton
1725–1807 · England · Baroque
Former slave-ship captain turned evangelical Anglican priest, co-author of the Olney Hymns and writer of 'Amazing Grace'.
Life
John Newton was born in Wapping, London, in 1725, the son of a shipmaster; his mother, a Nonconformist, died when he was six. He first went to sea at eleven, was later pressed into the Royal Navy, and spent years in the Atlantic slave trade, for a time as a servant in West Africa and later as a captain of slave ships. A violent storm at sea in 1748 began his turn to Christ, though by his own later account his conversion was gradual and he continued in the trade for some years. After leaving the sea he studied for the ministry and was ordained in the Church of England, serving for two decades as curate of Olney in Buckinghamshire and then in London. In later life he publicly renounced the slave trade and supported the abolition campaign, living to see the trade abolished in 1807, a few months before his death.
As a Hymn Writer
At Olney Newton and the poet William Cowper wrote the Olney Hymns (1779) for weekly prayer meetings in the parish. Newton's hymns are plain, personal and pastoral: they preach the grace that rescues the undeserving, often in the first person of a converted sinner, and many are built on a single Scripture text. Behind them stands his own story of being found by grace, but he rarely sentimentalises it; the emphasis falls on God's faithfulness, the sufficiency of Christ, and the Church as Zion secure in God's promises. His hymns in Lutheran books are prized for their warmth and their clear confession that salvation is God's work alone.
In The Lutheran Hymnal and Lutheran Service Book (8)
- Safely Through Another Week
- On What has Now been Sown
- Now May He Who from the Dead
- While with Ceaseless Course the Sun
- How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds
- Approach, My Soul, the Mercy-Seat
- Come, My Soul, Thy Suit Prepare
- Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken
Sources: Wikipedia, 'John Newton'.