John Newton
1725-1807 18th century
Repentance that comes late and works anyway, and grace found wider than the memory of the harm one has done.
Who was John Newton?
A sailor pressed into the navy, a deserter, himself held for a time in servitude on the Guinea coast, he became a captain of slave ships and stayed in that trade for years after calling himself converted. As curate of Olney he wrote with his neighbour William Cowper a book of hymns, one of which begins "Amazing grace". Past sixty he published a public confession about the slave trade and testified before parliamentary committees alongside Wilberforce.
In their own words
Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound) that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.
I hope it will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was, once, an active instrument, in a business at which my heart now shudders.
Approach, my soul, the mercy-seat where Jesus answers prayer; there humbly fall before his feet, for none can perish there.