ABSTRACT
John Newton was born in London on the 24th of July, 1725 (O.S.). His mother died when he was seven years old, and with her died the pious teaching which was intended to prepare him for the ministry. After two years spent at a boarding school in Essex, he made several voyages with his father, a stern sea captain in the Mediterranean trade, who, having been educated himself at a Jesuit college in Spain, found a situation for his son at Alicant. The youth’s unsettled behaviour and impatience of restraint, necessitated his removal after a few months trial. Before he was sixteen years of age, he had taken up a religious profession three or four times, his condition alternating between asceticism and the most horrid profanity, as the mood took him. After two years of strict Pharisaism, he met with Lord Shaftesbury’s “Characteristics,” and the fine words of “The Rhapsody” beguiled his heart and operated like slow poison. In 1742, Mr. Manesty, a merchant in Liverpool and a friend of his father’s, offered to send young Newton to Jamaica, and take care of his future welfare. John was well pleased, and everything was prepared for his voyage. He was upon the point of setting out the following week, when his father sent him to visit his relations in Kent for a few days. Here he met Mary Catlett, a young lady not quite fourteen, who had been designed from her birth, by his mother and her mother, as his future wife. Being profoundly ignorant of this little matrimonial arrangement, Newton fell madly in love with the girl. He preferred a treasure in Kent to a fortune in Jamaica, stayed three weeks instead of three days, missed his passage, and encountered his father’s wrath. Soon after this he made a voyage to Venice as a common sailor, and fell a prey to evil companionship. A remarkable dream startled his conscience about this time, but the impression soon faded away. In December, 1743, he visited his friends in Kent, and again, for love of Mary Catlett, frustrated his father’s plans on his behalf. His thoughtless conduct at length led him into the meshes of the press-gang, and he found himself on board the Harwich man-of-war, at the Nore. War being daily expected, there was no hope of release. After a month’s hardship he was, by his father’s influence, taken upon the quarter-deck as a midshipman. Here, with his foot on the lowest rung of the naval ladder, he might have aspired to high command, for he had in him the stuff which makes British admirals. Providence, however, had not raised John Newton to be either a martyred Byng, or an idolised Nelson. He fell under the influence of a zealous atheist, who completed the ruin of his principles—no difficult task,—for the youth, while talking of virtue, delighted in all manner of wickedness.
