Amazing Grace: John Newton exemplified 'the great doctrine of love'

Ruth Eardley  |  UK & Ireland
Date posted:  25 Oct 2024
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Amazing Grace: John Newton exemplified 'the great doctrine of love'

John Newton, writer of 'Amazing Grace'

According to theologian Jim Packer, John Newton was ‘the friendliest, wisest, humblest and least pushy of the 18th -century evangelical leaders’. At a recent church history lecture by Dr Lesley Rowe, Leicestershire folk were also pleased to learn that Newton had a special place in his heart for the county and visited on several occasions.

Newton was motherless from the age of six, boarded at a harsh school from the age of eight, taken to sea at 11 and an accomplished blasphemer by age 12. He was press-ganged into the Navy, flogged, enslaved and, famously, became captain of a slave-trading ship.

It was during a storm at sea that Newton first turned to God: his dramatic autobiography was published in1764, the same year he began his ministry as curate at Olney.

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