NEWTON, John, an English divine, remarkable for his trials and adventures, and for the deep piety of his after life, was the son of a sea-captain, and was born in London in July 1725. After receiving a slight elementary education at a boarding establishment in Essex, he went to sea at the age of eleven; and from that time he was left to teach himself in the severe school of experience. The sensitive and thoughtful boy now became the prey of conflicting doubts and difficulties. For the next six years the religious impressions which he had received by the knee of his mother were in a continual struggle with the suggestions of atheistical books and scoffing companions. He became by turns a reader of the Bible and a student of Shaftesbury—a Pharisaical ascetic and a daring blasphemer—a remorseful penitent and a callous sceptic. At length, in his nineteenth year, his life assumed a more hopeful aspect. A passionate attachment which he then formed for a young Kentish maiden, who afterwards became his wife, began to restore the health and geniality of his heart; and his unexpected promotion in the following year to the rank of a midshipman on board the Havre man-of-war, afforded additional motives for good conduct. Yet the self-willed seaman soon entailed upon himself a long series of tormenting troubles. Taking it into his flighty brain to abandon his ship while she still lay at Plymouth, he was caught, brought back, flogged, and
degraded. He set sail for India in 1745 a common sailor, taunted by his messmates, frowned upon by his superiors, and fuming with disappointment, remorse, and revenge. At Madeira a Guinea vessel took him in exchange for another. But in the course of six months he was fain to be landed a penniless adventurer on the African coast near Sierra Leone. Employment was soon found in the service of a slave trader in one of the Islands of the Plantanes. But the severity of the climate, and the cruelty of his master's black concubine, turned that employment into the most grovelling bondage. A year had not passed before the stout English sailor was transformed into a spiritless, half-naked wretch, suffering under the effects of fever, shivering under the wind and wet of the rainy season, devouring the nauseous roots which he stole by night from the plantations, or the fish which he caught by the sea-shore, and exciting the contempt and even the pity of the meanest of the slaves. Still more degrading did his condition become when he had been hired by a more merciful master. An English captain arriving at Sierra Leone in February 1747 with orders from his father to bring him home, found Newton herding contentedly with the Negroes in their low pleasures and gross superstitions; and it was only the thought of the fair maiden in Kent that could induce him to embark for his native land. The perils of this homeward voyage brought at length the severe moral training of Newton to a successful issue. On a March evening in 1748 he found himself on board a struggling and half-founder vessel in the midst of the raging Atlantic; his sceptic indifference and blaspheming braggardism deserted him at the near prospect of death; the truths of the gospel, after a season of doubt, recommended themselves to his trembling spirit; and, when the ship reached Ireland four weeks afterwards, he stepped on shore an altered man. The life of Newton now for the first time became bright with the smiles of fortune. In 1750 his long-continued attachment to Mary Catlett was ratified by marriage, and he was shortly afterwards appointed commander of an African slaver. It was at this time also that those studies began to be prosecuted which trained and prepared his mind for the clerical office. On shore, during the intervals between his different voyages, and on deck when his ship was bounding before the breeze, he was fond of poring over Horace, Livy, Buchanan, and Erasmus. After a sudden stroke of illness in 1754 had forced him to exchange a seafaring life for the office of a landing waiter in the customs at Liverpool, he extended his studies to Greek and Hebrew, and the best theological works in Latin, French, and English. At length, in 1764, he was ordained, and was appointed curate of the parish of Olney. His pastoral labours were not followed by so much fruit as might have been expected. With his healthy piety, indeed, he did much to relieve the melancholy of the poet Cowper, and to form the religious opinions of the commentator Scott. But his kind-hearted liberality and his practical home-thrusts were alike spent in vain upon the senseless and profligate boors of the parish. It was not until he had been presented to the rectory of St Mary Woolnoth, London, in 1779, that he became one of the great instruments in dispelling the religious apathy of that age. The public were already in possession of his autobiography and of many of his letters; and they now began to regard him as a living proof of the efficacy of evangelical Christianity. This impression was increased and perpetuated by the earnest, simple-hearted zeal of his pulpit ministrations. He continued to preach thrice a week, even when he was bending under a weight of more than fourscore years, and his sight, hearing, and memory were fast failing. His friends entreated him to stop: "What!" he exclaimed, "shall the old African blasphemer stop while he can speak?" He died not long afterwards, in December 1807.
A second edition of John Newton's works, containing his Autobiography, the Omicron Letters, the Cardiphonia, A Review of Ecclesiastical History, the Olney Hymns, and numerous sermons, discourses, tracts, and miscellaneous writings, were published in 6 vols. 8vo, London, 1816. His Life, by the Rev. Richard Cecil, was published in Cecil's Works, 4 vols. 8vo, London, 1811, and has also been printed separately.