![]() ![]() Captain Newton had arranged for his son to go to Jamaica with a Liverpool ship-owner who had interests in slaves and sugar, there to act as a slave overseer. In 1742, soon after John’s father retired from the sea and took a shore job with the Royal Africa Company, he announced the good news that John would soon make his fortune. In all of these activities, he later remembered, his chief aim was not to please God but to escape damnation. On each of these occasions, he turned for a time to such Christian disciplines as prayer, pious reading, and the keeping of spiritual diaries. Though he fell repeatedly into temptation, he always rose again, resolved to live the life his mother had shown him. ![]() In the long interims between these trips, he was allowed by his stepmother to run free, and he got himself into ample adolescent trouble. From age 11 to 17 John accompanied his father on five sea voyages that proved a stern and thorough education in seamanship. Together they attended an Independent (Congregational) church in London, at a time when barely 1 percent of that city’s population went to churches associated with that Puritan-derived group.Īt age 7, however, Newton’s mother died, and he fell under the less religious and more distant care of his sea-captain father. His mother, a pious Dissenter, taught him to read Scripture and memorize Reformed catechisms and hymns. Newton was born in London, an only child, in 1725. But Newton knew well the darkness at the heart of every person. He was loved and trusted by thousands he preached in one of the most prestigious parishes of London young ministers competed to stay with him and learn under the master. After all, by 1800 no evangelical clergyman had gained more fame or exercised more spiritual influence than Newton. Such a self-characterization may seem like false humility. THE “OLD AFRICAN BLASPHEMER.” This was how John Newton (1725-1807) often referred to himself in later life.
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