John Newton

John Newton (1725-1807)

Born: July 24, 1725, London, England.

Died: December 21, 1807, London, England.

Buried: Originally at St. Mary Woolnoth Church, Lombard Street, London. In 1893, Newton and his wife Mary were reinterred in the southeast corner of the graveyard at St. Peter and St. Paul's Church, Olney.

Pseudonym: Omicron.

John Newton (1725-1807)

Newton's mother died when he was seven years old. At age 11, with but two years schooling and only a rudimentary knowledge of Latin, John went to sea with his father. His life at sea was filled with wonderful escapes, vivid dreams, and a sailor's recklessness. He grew into a godless and abandoned man. He was once flogged as a deserter from the navy, and for 15 months lived, half starved and ill treated, as a slave in Africa.

A chance reading of Thomas à Kempis sowed the seed of his conversion. It was accelerated by a night spent steering a waterlogged ship in the face of apparent death. He was then 23 years old. Over the next six years, during which he commanded a slave ship, his faith matured. He spent the next nine years mostly in Liverpool, studying Hebrew and Greek and mingling with Whitefield, Wesley, and the Nonconformists. He was eventually ordained, and became curate at Olney, Buckinghamshire, in 1764. It was at Olney that he formed a life long friendship with William Cowper, and produced the Olney Hymns.

A marble plaque at St. Mary Woolnoth carried the epitaph which Newton himself wrote:

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,
restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach
the Gospel which he had long laboured to destroy.
He ministered,
Near sixteen years in Olney, in Bucks,
And twenty-eight years in this Church.

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John Newton