AP

John Newton’s 1767 Diary

Some authors wait a long time to see their work reach publication. In Newton’s case, the wait for this one has been 256 years!

Rhys Bezzant, Dean of the Anglican Institute at Ridley College, comments: ‘1767 was a remarkable year in the life of John Newton, not least because he travelled extensively and subsequently moved into a new rectory. In his Diary of this year we learn about his aching soul, his busy schedule, his pastoral heart, and his prodigious correspondence. Here we meet no detached preacher elevated above his congregation, but someone who wrestled with the meaning of a text and engaged honestly with his parishioners concerning his own future in Olney…’

In 1767 John Newton kept a small pocket diary of the sort we might buy today, with one page for recording the week’s events and the opposite page for keeping a record of accounts. You would be excused for thinking that the transcript would be brief, but somehow this has morphed into an illustrated 72-page A4 edition, augmented with illustrations and illuminating footnotes, published by The John Newton Project.

Many of the brief entries in the diary get explanations in the footnotes. For instance, on 27 November the list of those to whom Newton had written letters included ‘Mr Symonds’. From additional material we know the contents of this letter. The newly appointed pastor of Bunyan Meeting, Joshua Symonds, was settling with his wife into their home in Bedford, but he was struggling with the responsibility he felt for correcting everyone else’s views! Newton counselled him to rather be ‘on peaceful and neighbourly terms’ and not to attempt ‘to force spiritual things too much upon those who do not like them; or to expect them from those who have not experienced them.’ He approved his faithfulness, ‘but in some things, perhaps, you would do as well to keep your mind more to yourself; I mean in your free and unreserved speaking of ministers, etc’. Caution was called for. ‘My judgment of many persons and things agrees with yours; but I have seen there is good sense in the old proverb, “Least said, soonest mended.” We are sometimes mistaken in our own spirits, and though it becomes us to be plain and open upon proper occasions, it is not our duty to be very busy in disturbing a nest of hornets.’

Brian Edwards, pastor, author and former President of the FIEC, remarks: ‘More than any biography of Newton, these diaries reveal the inner struggles of the great pastor and preacher of the gospel.  We learn so much of the real John Newton. Constantly he complains of “dullness and heartlessness” that he is “cold” and laments the many days that were spent to little purpose and with so little achieved. Our hearts go out to the man who confessed to his diary on Wednesday 2 September: “Feverish in body, disturbed in mind – sinful, vile, tempted. A lost, humbling day. Have seldom seen a worse. Lord pardon.”

This, from the man who regularly read his Hebrew and Greek Bible (both self-taught), who spent his days writing valuable letters, preparing, preaching, advising visitors, visiting the poor and sick and speaking at the weekly children’s meeting, and would frequently return home to discover unannounced guests waiting for him; when he occasionally commented on some visitors, “they stayed the whole day”, one can only guess what he meant by that!

However, we can imagine that he enjoyed October 22^nd when, having taken possession of the enlarged and modernised vicarage and even before the family moved in, he was “busy setting to rights my new study”. It was then that he placed his great text above the fireplace.’

Newton set aside the Friday of their first full week in the new vicarage ‘as a solemn day of prayer to entreat the Lord’s blessing on my new habitation’. Looking back through his previous diary he found a blank page and entered a summary so far for 1767. It serves as an excellent Introduction to our edition, revealing a year of a varied course of events, pressure to accept a large church in Yorkshire, travelling some 800 or so miles to visit old friends in Yorkshire, Liverpool, Cheshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire and Northamptonshire, his ‘normal’ parish work in Olney, the commencement of what would prove to be a two and a half year exposition of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress for their Tuesday night prayer meetings, listening to and befriending visiting Baptist Independent and Congregational ministers and entertaining many visitors including the Wilberforces of Wimbledon (aunt and uncle of the future MP).

We find an explanation of the famous texts Newton had painted above the fireplace in his study. The first, from Isaiah 43:4, he preached on Sunday morning 25 October: Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable... The second, from Deuteronomy 15:15 was the text for his first Thursday night lecture that week: but thou shalt remember that thou wast a bond-man in the land of Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee.

As he explained to Lord Dartmouth when accounting for the additional cost for the lettering in his patron’s bill, ‘I am persuaded your Lordship will think this 6s 8d well laid out if it should in some measure contribute to the desirable end of reminding me from day to day what I was, and by what means I am now undeservedly settled in the Vicarage at Olney.’

His closed that day with prayer: ‘O quicken me in thy ways, give me more of thy image, more of thy presence, more of thy wisdom. Give me a spirit of prayer, of faith, of peace, of power and of a sound mind. Enable me to walk humbly, thankfully, faithfully before thee, favour me with nearness to thy seat, smile upon my retirements. Prepare me for thy public service, give me more light, more zeal, more courage, more tenderness, more freedom, more success in my ministrations. Fix deeply in my mind where thou didst find me, what thou hast done for me, what thou hast prepared for me. The more thou art pleased to exalt me, the more may I abase myself. O preserve me from pride, from ostentation, from idolatry, from the love of the world, from trusting in an arm of flesh, from leaning to my own understanding. Enable me to be what I profess, to practice what I preach, to walk as a pattern and example to the flock, and to live under an abiding sense of the emptiness and vanity of all here below, and let my conversation be in heaven and my hope in thy blessed name. Amen.’

Some of Newton’s notes for the sermons he preached during 1767 can be read on our website at johnnewton.org/sermons. His Diary for 1767 is available from johnnewton.org/shop.

– Marylynn Rouse