March 14.
I think you would hardly expect me to write if you knew how I am forced to live at London. However, I would have you believe I am as willing to write to you as you are to receive my letters. As a proof, I try to send you a few lines now, though I am writing to you, and talking to Mrs.--, both at once! and this is the only season I can have to exchange a few words with her. She is a woman of a sorrowful spirit; she talks and weeps. I believe she would think herself happy to be situated as you are, notwithstanding the many advantages she has at London. I see daily, and I hope you have likewise learned, that places and outward circumstances cannot of themselves either hinder or help us in walking with God. So far as He is pleased to be with us, and to teach us by His Spirit, wherever we are we shall get forward; and if He does not bless us and water us every moment, the more we have of our own wishes and wills, the more uneasy we shall make ourselves.
One thing is needful; an humble, dependent spirit, to renounce our own wills, and give up ourselves to His disposal without reserve. This is the path of peace; and it is the path of safety; for He has said, the meek He will teach His way, and those who yield up themselves to Him He will guide with His eye. I hope you will fight and pray against every rising of a murmuring spirit, and be thankful for the great things which He has already done for you. It is good to be humbled for sin, but not to be discouraged: for though we are poor creatures, Jesus is a complete Saviour and we bring more honour to God by believing in His name and trusting His word of promise, than we could do by a thousand outward works.
I pray the Lord to shine upon your soul, and to fill you with all joy and peace in believing. Remember to pray for us, that we may be brought home to you in peace.
I am, &c.
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He was a strong support of the Evangelicals in the Church of England, and was a friend of the dissenting clergy as well as of the ministry of his own church.
He was the author of many hymns, including "Amazing Grace".
John Henry Newton was an English Anglican clergyman and former slave-ship captain. He was the author of many hymns, including "Amazing Grace".
Sailing back to England in 1748 aboard the merchant ship, he experienced a spiritual conversion in the Greyhound, which was hauling a load of beeswax and dyer's wood. The ship encountered a severe storm off the coast of Donegal and almost sank. Newton awoke in the middle of the night and finally called out to God as the ship filled with water. It was this experience which he later marked as the beginnings of his conversion to evangelical Christianity. As the ship sailed home, Newton began to read the Bible and other religious literature. By the time he reached Britain, he had accepted the doctrines of Evangelical Christianity.
He became well-known as an evangelical lay minister, and applied for the Anglican priesthood in 1757, although it was more than seven years before he was eventually accepted and ordained into the Church of England.
Newton joined English abolitionist William Wilberforce, leader of the Parliamentary campaign to abolish the slave trade, and lived to see the passage of the Slave Trade Act 1807.