Newton, John

191 p. ; 19 cm

John Newton (1725-1807) has rightly been called 'the letter-writer par excellence of the Evangelical Revival'. Newton himself seems to have come to the conclusion, albeit reluctantly, that letter-writing was his greatest gift. In a letter to a friend he confessed, 'I rather reckoned upon doing more good by some of my other works than by my 'Letters', which I wrote without study, or any public design; but the Lord said, 'You shall be most useful by them,' and I learned to say, 'Thy will be done! Use me as Thou pleasest, only make me useful.' Indeed, he wrote to his close friend William Bull that if the letters were 'owned to comfort the afflicted, to quicken the careless, to confirm the wavering, I may rejoice in the honour He has done me', and not envy the greatest writers of the age. All but ten of the letters in the present volume have been brought out of undeserved obscurity by Dr Grant Gordon, whose researches in libraries and archives, as well as in little-known nineteenth-century periodicals, have uncovered much material which is certainly calculated to comfort, quicken, and confirm. Of those already in print, one letter is in volume 1 of the Trust's six-volume edition of Newton's Works, and nine more are in volume 2. Three of the nine are also in the Trust's Letters of John Newton, edited by Josiah Bull. The rest should be new to almost all readers. The particular recipient of Newton's 'wise counsel' in this book was John Ryland, Jr. (1753-1825), Baptist pastor and educator, and close friend of Andrew Fuller, William Carey, and all the pioneers of the modern missionary movement. But in the background stand all the major figures of the eighteenth-century Evangelical Revival. A list of Newton's friends and correspondents would, in fact, read like a 'who's who' of the Revival. And forming the wider background is a very eventful period of history, from the American Revolution to the French Revolutionary Wars, by way of the colonization of Australia, the first missions to India, and the abolition of the slave trade. Dr Gordon has helpfully set the letters in the context of these events and provided useful background detail. The reader will discover afresh in these letters, not only mature and wise counsel, but a wholesome emphasis on true Christian experience, a great breadth of Christian sympathy, and a strong confidence in the power of the grace of God, for, as Newton said, 'Grace has long and strong arms!' - Vendor description (wtsbooks.com)

"From 1750 to 1754 John Newton was Master of slave ships (a quite respectable occupation), and the journal which he then kept has ever since been locked away, unseen by any historian and only quoted briefly by one of his biographers. It is unique as a record of the slave trade. It covers three voyages from England to Africa, giving details about months of trading on the west coast, the notorious 'middle passage' to the West Indies and the return voyages to England, and is an important addition to our information about slave trading, about the history of West Africa and, to a lesser extent, about life at sea in the mid-eighteenth century. The editors have omitted passages which are repetitive and have included a few extracts from Newton's diary and letters written from sea at the same time as the journal, so that Newton's character while he was engaged in this shocking trade is revealed to an astonishing degree. Later, when Newton was a clergyman and the intimate friend of the poet Cowper, he wrote hymns which are still popular and books which were reprinted again and again all through the nineteenth century. His flair for literature adds to the fascination of the journal. On the title page of the journal Newton wrote a Latin tag, 'It will be pleasant to remember these things hereafter,' but in middle age he described the slave trade as 'a business at which my heart now shudders.' He became an abolitionist and was largely responsible for bringing Wilberforce into the anti-slavery campaign. With the journal before him to refresh his memory, he also wrote Thoughts on the African Slave Trade, a pamphlet which supplements the journal and is included as an appendix."--Book jacket.