Editing Amazing Grace (section)

== John Newton's conversion ==
{{quote box
| width = 22em
| fontsize = 95%
| quote = How industrious is Satan served. I was formerly one of his active undertemptors and had my influence been equal to my wishes I would have carried all the human race with me. A common drunkard or profligate is a petty sinner to what I was.
| source = John Newton, 1778<ref name="moyers">[[Bill Moyers|Moyers, Bill]] (director). ''Amazing Grace with Bill Moyers'', Public Affairs Television, Inc. (1990).</ref>
}}

According to the ''Dictionary of American Hymnology'', "Amazing Grace" is [[John Newton]]'s spiritual autobiography in verse.<ref name="dah">[http://www.hymnary.org/text/amazing_grace_how_sweet_the_sound "Amazing Grace How Sweet the Sound"], ''Dictionary of American Hymnology''. Retrieved 31 October 2009.</ref>

In 1725, Newton was born in [[Wapping]], a district in London near the [[Thames]]. His father was a shipping merchant who was brought up as a [[Catholic Church|Catholic]] but had [[Protestant]] sympathies, and his mother was a devout Independent, unaffiliated with the [[Anglican Church]]. She had intended Newton to become a clergyman, but she died of [[tuberculosis]] when he was six years old.<ref>Martin (1950), pp. 8–9.</ref> For the next few years, while his father was at sea Newton was raised by his emotionally distant stepmother. He was also sent to boarding school, where he was mistreated.<ref>Newton (1824), p. 12.</ref> At the age of eleven, he joined his father on a ship as an apprentice; his seagoing career would be marked by headstrong disobedience.

As a youth, Newton began a pattern of coming very close to death, examining his relationship with God, then relapsing into bad habits. As a sailor, he denounced his faith after being influenced by a shipmate who discussed with him ''[[Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times]]'', a book by the [[Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury|Third Earl of Shaftesbury]]. In a series of letters Newton later wrote, "Like an unwary sailor who quits his port just before a rising storm, I renounced the hopes and comforts of the [[Gospel]] at the very time when every other comfort was about to fail me."<ref>Newton (1824), pp. 21–22.</ref> His disobedience caused him to be [[Impressment|pressed]] into the Royal Navy, and he took advantage of opportunities to overstay his leave.

He deserted the navy to visit Mary "Polly" Catlett, a family friend with whom he had fallen in love.<ref>Martin (1950), p. 23.</ref> After enduring humiliation for deserting,{{efn|Stripped of his rank, whipped in public, and subjected to the abuses directed to prisoners and other press-ganged men in the Navy, he demonstrated insolence and rebellion during his service for the next few months, remarking that the only reason he did not murder the captain or commit suicide was because he did not want Polly to think badly of him. (Martin [1950], pp. 41–47.)}} he was traded as crew to a slave ship.

He began a career in slave trading.{{efn|Newton kept a series of detailed journals as a slave trader; these are perhaps the first primary source of the [[Atlantic slave trade]] from the perspective of a merchant (Moyers). Women, naked or nearly so, upon their arrival on ship were claimed by the sailors, and Newton alluded to sexual misbehavior in his writings that has since been interpreted by historians to mean that he, along with other sailors, took (and presumably raped) whomever he chose. (Martin [1950], pp.&nbsp;82–85)(Aitken, p. 64.)}}

[[File:Newton j.jpg|thumb|left|alt=Engraving of an older heavyset man, wearing robes, vestments, and wig|[[John Newton]] in his later years]]

Newton often openly mocked the captain by creating obscene poems and songs about him, which  became so popular that the crew began to join in.<ref>Martin (1950), pp. 51–52.</ref> His disagreements with several colleagues resulted in his being starved almost to death, imprisoned while at sea, and chained like the slaves they carried. He was himself enslaved by the [[Sherbro people|Sherbro]] and forced to work on a plantation in [[Sierra Leone]] near the [[Sherbro River]]. After several months he came to think of Sierra Leone as his home, but his father intervened after Newton sent him a letter describing his circumstances, and crew from another ship happened to find him.{{efn|Newton's father was friends with Joseph Manesty, who intervened several times in Newton's life. Newton was supposed to go to Jamaica on Manesty's ship, but missed it while he was with the Catletts. When Newton's father got his son's letter detailing his conditions in Sierra Leone, he asked Manesty to find Newton. Manesty sent the ''Greyhound'', which travelled along the African coast trading at various stops. An associate of Newton lit a fire, signalling to ships he was interested in trading just 30 minutes before the ''Greyhound'' appeared. (Aitken, pp. 34–35, 64–65.)}} Newton claimed the only reason he left Sierra Leone was because of Polly.<ref>Martin (1950), p. 63.</ref>

While aboard the ship ''Greyhound'', Newton gained notoriety as being one of the most profane men the captain had ever met. In a culture where sailors habitually swore, Newton was admonished several times for not only using the worst words the captain had ever heard, but creating new ones to exceed the limits of verbal debauchery.<ref>Martin (1950), pp. 67–68.</ref> In March 1748, while the ''Greyhound'' was in the North Atlantic, a violent storm came upon the ship that was so rough it swept overboard a crew member who was standing where Newton had been moments before.{{efn|Several retellings of Newton's life story claim that he was carrying slaves during the voyage in which he experienced his conversion, but the ship was carrying livestock, wood, and beeswax from the coast of Africa. (Aitken, p. 76.)}} After hours of the crew emptying water from the ship and expecting to be capsized, Newton and another mate tied themselves to the ship's pump to keep from being washed overboard, working for several hours.<ref name=Martin73/> After proposing the measure to the captain, Newton had turned and said, "If this will not do, then Lord have mercy upon us!"<ref>Newton (1824), p. 41.</ref><ref>Martin (1950), pp. 70–71.</ref> Newton rested briefly before returning to the deck to steer for the next eleven hours. During his time at the wheel, he pondered his divine challenge.<ref name=Martin73>Martin (1950), p. 73.</ref>

About two weeks later, the battered ship and starving crew landed in [[Lough Swilly]], Ireland. For several weeks before the storm, Newton had been reading ''The Christian's Pattern'', a summary of the 15th-century ''[[The Imitation of Christ (book)|The Imitation of Christ]]'' by [[Thomas à Kempis]]. The memory of his own "Lord have mercy upon us!" uttered during a moment of desperation in the storm did not leave him; he began to ask if he was worthy of God's mercy or in any way redeemable. Not only had he neglected his faith but directly opposed it, mocking others who showed theirs, deriding and denouncing God as a myth. He came to believe that God had sent him a profound message and had begun to work through him.<ref>Aitken, pp. 81–84.</ref>

Newton's conversion was not immediate, but he contacted Polly's family and announced his intention to marry her. Her parents were hesitant as he was known to be unreliable and impetuous. They knew he was profane too but  allowed him to write to Polly, and he set to begin to submit to authority for her sake.<ref name="martin82-85">Martin (1950), pp. 82–85.</ref> He sought a place on a slave ship bound for Africa, and Newton and his crewmates participated in most of the same activities he had written about before; the only immorality from which he was able to free himself was profanity. After a severe illness his resolve was renewed, yet he retained the same attitude towards slavery as was held by his contemporaries.{{efn|When Newton began his journal in 1750, not only was slave trading seen as a respectable profession by the majority of Britons, its necessity to the overall prosperity of the kingdom was communally understood and approved. Only [[Quaker]]s, who were much in the minority and perceived as eccentric, had raised any protest about the practice. (Martin and Spurrell [1962], pp. xi–xii.)}} Newton continued in the slave trade through several voyages where he sailed the coasts of Africa, now as a captain, and procured slaves being offered for sale in larger ports, transporting them to North America.

In between voyages, he married Polly in 1750, and he found it more difficult to leave her at the beginning of each trip. After three shipping voyages in the slave trade, Newton was promised a position as ship's captain with cargo unrelated to slavery. But at the age of thirty, he collapsed and never sailed again.<ref>Aitken, p. 125.</ref>{{efn|Newton's biographers and Newton himself does not put a name to this episode other than a "fit" in which he became unresponsive, suffering dizziness and a headache. His doctor advised him not to go to sea again, and Newton complied. Jonathan Aitken called it a stroke or [[seizure]], but its cause is unknown. (Martin [1950], pp. 140–141.)(Aitken, p. 125.)}}