August 13, 2025 Show with Dr. Michael A. G. Haykin on “John Newton: The Amazing Story Behind the Writer of ‘Amazing Grace'”

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 13th day of August 2025, and I'm thrilled to have a returning guest on the program today.

He will be no stranger to most of my regular listeners. He's been a guest on this program a number of times.

His name is Dr. Michael A .G. Haken, a world -renowned Christian historian, professor of church history and biblical spirituality, and director of the

Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Today he's going to be addressing John Newton, the amazing story behind the writer of Amazing Grace on the 300th anniversary of his birth, and it's my honor and privilege of welcoming you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

Michael A .G. Haken. Yeah, it's great to be with you. Thank you. First of all, please tell us exactly about what you do as a part of your duties as professor of church history and biblical spirituality and also director of the

Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies over there at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Well, I obviously teach, and most of my teaching is at the doctoral level. I have a good number of Ph .D.

students whom I supervise, both in terms of directing their theses but also teaching doctoral seminars, and then do the number of courses at the

Master of Divinity level, basic courses in Church History I and II, and then also electives dealing with people like Andrew Fuller and Jonathan Edwards, Augustine, the

Cappadocian Fathers. The Andrew Fuller Center has been in operation for nearly 20 years now, and our mandate is to recover and retrieve and to encourage

Baptists thinking about their past, particularly as it relates to Andrew Fuller, who is in many ways the grandfather of the modern missionary movement.

He was instrumental in William Carey going overseas. He mentored Carey in some ways.

Both he and Carey knew the subject of our discussion today, John Newton. Fuller would have known him fairly well.

One of Fuller's friends, John Ryland Jr., was actually mentored by John Newton, and there is a record of that mentoring in a variety of letters that have been preserved and published by the

Banner of Truth in Wise Counsel, is the name of the book, edited by Grant Gordon. And so the

Fuller Center puts on also conferences that deal with church history, both large conferences, two, three day affairs, as well as smaller conferences.

This year we're doing two things here in Ontario where I live. We're doing a major conference with a number of other organizations on the

Council of Nicaea. And then in Louisville, at the end of October, we're doing a small conference on John Gill, the

Baptist theologian from the mid -18th century, whom I interact with and occasionally disagree with.

Yes, we just had a fascinating two -hour interview not long ago with a friend and colleague of yours,

Dr. Tom Nettles, on John Gill.

And he was taking the position in defense of John Gill against the charges of hyper -Calvinism.

And I think that you two have disagreed over that, haven't you? We have.

But I thought it was a rather fascinating discussion. And by the way, folks, Dr.

Nettles will be back on the program this Friday, right after the 1700th anniversary of the

Council of Nicaea. And he is going to be discussing the importance of that council this

Friday. So you might want to mark your calendars if you're listening. Well, I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to have you on the program this week.

It would have been great to have you on August 4th when the actual birthday of John Newton was.

But we're not far after that, August 13th. And this is, as I said earlier, the 300th anniversary of the birth of John Newton.

And can you first of all tell us about where this great hero of the faith, who penned one of the most beloved hymns globally, that is

Amazing Grace, a hymn known by even those outside of the

Christian faith, sometimes even known by heart. By those outside of the

Christian faith, there have been quite a number of secular recording artists over the decades who have recorded their own versions of Amazing Grace, even if they don't believe every word of it.

They reject every word of it, I should say. So tell us about this fascinating figure from history, starting with his birth and anything from that era, which eventually led him to where he became a slave trader.

Yeah, his story is really a fascinating one in many, many respects. And given the fact that his hymn

Amazing Grace is probably the most popular hymn in North America, it wouldn't necessarily, interestingly enough, share that kind of limelight in the

UK. It's very well known and popular in the UK, but in America it probably is the most favorite hymn from the past.

They're even singing it at Roman Catholic churches these days.

Yeah, exactly. Given the status of that hymn, it's not surprising that there's been interest shown in its author.

Newton was born, as you mentioned, in August 1725. The area of London that he was born in is

Wapping, which is close to the Thames, and was not in that day the most salubrious of areas.

His father, many of the people in that area were involved in elements dealing with the sea, sailing, either shipbuilders, menders of sails, carpenters that would be working on the ships, etc.,

as well as sailors. His father was a shipmaster in the merchant service, so he wasn't in the

Royal Navy per se, but he was a merchant marine, a merchant serviceman, and sailed often in the

Mediterranean. Not a believer. His mother, Elizabeth, was brought up as a nonconformist, probably a

Congregationalist, and sought to instill something of the love of God into young John.

Sadly, she died in 1732, about two weeks before her son's, that is,

John's seventh birthday. Newton spent a couple of years at boarding school, and then his father decided that he would go to sea with him at the age of 11.

Newton would sail with his father at least six times before his father retired in 1742.

His father had various plans for him to work in a sugar cane plantation in Jamaica.

England has become a major slave trader in this period, and probably the leading nation in Europe in terms of slave trading.

But Newton decided not to take that position, but signed on with a merchant vessel sailing independently to the

Mediterranean. And in 1743, back home, he was visiting some friends, and he was press ganged into the

Royal Navy. One of the liberties given to the Royal Navy was that during wartime, they could press gang citizens, but also particularly people who worked in the merchant service.

What does that actually mean? Is that like involuntary drafting? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, exactly. And they would seize these men at local ports, and they often could tell sailors, sometimes by the gate by which they walked, the ability to navigate a ship during a storm or rough seas.

And so Newton was press ganged into the Royal Navy and served for a period of time on the

HMS Harwich, H -A -R -W -I -C -H. He tried to desert and was flogged for doing so.

Punishment in the Royal Navy was brutal. And Newton's response was one of deep anger, thought initially of killing the captain, and then killing himself, and proved to be a very disreputable figure on board the ship, encouraging the sailors to engage in all kinds of obscenities, verbal attacks on the

Christian faith, verbally, to the point that the captain of the ship decided to basically trade him with a slave ship to get him off board.

And so the Harwich was en route to India, and they met a slave ship named the

Pegasus, which was bound for West Africa. And so Newton was traded for some sailors on board the

Pegasus. And so from that point on, Newton now is involved in sailing on slave ships.

Not surprisingly, he didn't get along with the crew of the Pegasus, and they abandoned him in 1745 on the coast of West Africa, where he ended up as a slave to a slave dealer named

Amos Clough and his African wife. And he was actually then, at that point, a slave himself.

Meanwhile, his father was desperately searching for news of him. He knew that he had been on the

Harwich, and transferred to the Pegasus, but then disappears. Finally, in 1748, he was rescued by a sea captain who had been asked by Newton's father to search for him.

And as they're returning back to England in 1748, the ship ran into a major, major storm off the coast of Donegal in Ireland, and it seemed that the ship was about to sink.

And Newton cried out to God. The first prayer he probably uttered for, at that point, a good nearly 20 years, and crying out for deliverance.

And the ship was saved, and Newton began then to begin to think about what he had done and how

God had responded. And at that 1748, he begins reading the scriptures, and Newton would mark the year, the month,

March 1748, the date, March 21st, 1748, as the date of his conversion.

And the change in Newton is dramatic. Profanity, gambling, drinking, all fall by the wayside.

And he begins to frequent Christian services, but he is still involved in the slave trade.

And he will take two major trips as a slave captain, actually three trips as a slave captain down to Africa, where they would take goods to sell to African chiefs in exchange for slaves, and then take the slaves to America, and then come back to Britain with various goods from the

Caribbean or America. And in 1754, he had a stroke, still very young, but obviously

God's behind it because he could no longer go to sea. He becomes a tide master in Liverpool, and from that point on, he will begin to be involved pretty heavily in the evangelical awakening.

He listens on numerous occasions to John Wesley preach, George Whitefield preach, and by the 1760s is considering the possibility of becoming a minister of the gospel.

He thought about joining one of the non -conformist groups, the Cargaislists or Presbyterians, but eventually in 1764, he is ordained as a deacon, and then will be given the living, that is the ministry of the

Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Olney in the same year, 1764.

He's there until 1780, and when he is invited to become the rector of St.

Mary Woolmoth in London, and he will move to London in 1779, actually, and will be there until his death in 1807.

And tell us more of the details about the actual hymn, which began as a poem,

I understand, Amazing Grace, and it did not have that title originally,

I understand. It had a lengthier title, as most poems and hymns from that era did have more lengthy and complicated sounding titles to them.

Tell us more about the specific hymn that most of us have come to cherish. Yeah, so while he's at Olney in the 1760s, he makes the acquaintance and then becomes very fast friends with the poet

William Cooper, whose name is spelt William Cowper, but pronounced

Cooper. Cooper had had a dramatic conversion. Born in 1731, he had been destined for law, and that didn't work out because of his wrestling with various mental challenges, and to the point that he tried to commit suicide at least a couple of times, was committed to an institution by his family in an attempt to cure him, but instead he had an evangelical conversion.

And he moves to Olney in 1767, where he soon meets

Newton, and Cooper is still wrestling with depression, etc.,

and so in the 1770s, Newton suggests that they write a body of hymns together.

These would be known as the Olney Hymns. The volume comprises three books, and it's in that book that we find the hymn that we now call

Amazing Grace, which was originally called Faith's Review and Expectation, and it was originally designed as a

New Year's hymn, probably written in December of 1772, first used at a prayer meeting on January 1, 1773, and it was based on 1

Chronicles 16 and 17, and was, as I said, initially called

Faith's Review and Expectation. It's a New Year's hymn thinking back about the year that has gone before pledging loyalty to Christ in the year to come, and it begins with that great phrase,

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound. So it was originally part of a body of hymns.

It would never be sung in a church, in an Anglican church in Newton's day.

The Anglican church only sang the psalms. In fact, that was pretty universal amongst all

Protestants, wasn't it, at that time? No, by this time, Baptists and Congregationalists and English— well,

Baptists and Congregationalists definitely were singing hymns in public worship. They had been doing so for about 100 years, since the 1680s, 1690s, but Anglicans would not use hymns in public worship until the middle of the 19th century.

And so Newton would never have sung this in a church service, but it was sung in private prayer meetings.

Interesting. Well, actually, we have to go to our first commercial break right now.

If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Dr. Michael Hagen, preferably about John Newton, about the hymn

Amazing Grace, we will allow historical questions about that era as well.

Our email address is ChrisArnson at gmail .com. ChrisArnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least.

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We are having a conversation today with Dr. Michael A .G. Hagen, who is a world -renowned church historian and author and conference speaker.

And today we are focusing upon the life and legacy of John Newton, the author of Amazing Grace.

This is the 300th anniversary of his birth. By the way, we do have a listener question that relates to that.

The listener question is from Mel, M -E -L, in Yonkers, New York.

And Yonkers, I mean, and Mel says, I'm confused by the birth date of John Newton because it seems that they indicate different dates depending upon where you look on the

Internet. One of them being July 24th, 1725.

Do you have any explanation for that? Yes. In the 1750s,

England embraced a different dating system. Prior to that, they had used a calendar that the

New Year began in March, March 25th, which was known as Lady Day.

It's supposedly the day our Lord's mother conceived. And the

English year began, the beginning of the year, the dating of the beginning of the year was

March, March the 25th. In the 1750s, they pushed the beginning of the year back to January.

And they also adopted a new type of calendar, which was in use on the continent.

And in doing so, a number of the days got shifted. And so the old style, it's called old style,

O .S., usually for short, of Newton's birth would have been July the 24th, 1725.

But in terms of the new calendar, which is the calendar that we're under, it actually is now

August the 4th. So he would have presumably celebrated his birthday, definitely up until the 1750s, on July the 24th.

Whether he then shifted the celebration of his birthday to 4th of August is an interesting question to which

I don't have the answer. But what was July the 24th under the old system becomes the 4th of August under the new system.

After 17, I think it's 1753, when England adopts the new calendar, which had been invoked for about 200 years on the continent.

And in some ways, it's another indication of the way in which the British Isles were out of step with the

European continent, etc. But, yeah, that's the reason for the discrepancy there.

Well, thanks, Mel. And guess what? You have won a free copy of The Life of John Newton by Josiah Bull.

And that is compliments of Banner of Truth Publishing. And if you could, please send us your full mailing address in Yonkers, New York, so that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

can ship that book out to you. Thanks again for the question.

And by the way, Dr. Haken, what can you tell us about the author of this biography of John Newton, Josiah Bull?

Yeah, Josiah Bull was a corrugationalist minister in the area of Olney.

He knew Newton as he began his ministry.

He was younger than Newton. And so he knew his subject firsthand. He had access.

Newton gave him access to his personal diaries, of which there are three.

One of which, the middle one, that deals mostly with Newton's life in Liverpool in the 1750s.

We know that Bull used it because he cites him in it. But it disappeared from human eyes after Bull's book, which came out in the 1820s or 1830s.

And it was recently found in the last probably about seven years by a

Newton expert named Grant Gordon, who had been searching for it for about 25 years. And it was found in a private library in New York City, where it had been cataloged for many years.

They have no idea how it came to be there. So we now have all three of the diaries of Newton.

But Bull had significant access to intimate details of Newton's life that make his biography a particularly important one.

Great. And we have a question from Jack.

And Jack is in Australia. I'd love to have you contact me again with a separate email,

Jack, to let me know what city in Australia you're from. Hi, Brother Chris and Michael.

I love Iron Trip and Zion. Thank you for your radio program, Chris. My question is

Amazing Grace, which I love 90 percent of the hem. It's interesting.

Very much. But when it's played at my church, I don't sing.

The Lord has promised good to me as long as life endures, as it seems that life is horrible and I hate it.

Sorry if I'm laughing about that. Maybe I shouldn't be. But I look forward to heaven forever with our

Lord and brethren. Please comment on this. And he has a final comment.

I heard Mark Dever in person say that Amazing Grace was written by John Newton after reading

Luke 11, 13. Well, if you believe in Romans 8, 28,

I think that you would have to agree with Newton, wouldn't you? That the Lord has promised good to me.

But if you could, Michael, answer Jack's question. Yeah, I think

Newton is thinking way down the line. I think he's thinking of it, you know, to use a technical term, eschatologically.

The stanza that immediately follows this is, Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail, a mortal life shall cease.

I shall possess within of a joy and peace. And I think in some respects,

Newton has that kind of long term prospect in vision that God is good to his people despite the difficulties of this world.

I mean, Newton knows about those difficulties. I mean, the third stanza, Through many dangers, toils, and stares

I have already come. Newton knew something of the difficulties of this world.

His wife, Polly, who was absolutely... They have a fabulous marriage.

She pre -deceases him in death. And he never really gets over it, in one sense.

But despite the loss of his closest friend in this world, he nonetheless knew that the

Lord was good. And especially, as I said, in terms of the long prospect. And so I think a believer can, despite what he's going through, can sing that.

God does not promise that our pathway in this life of pilgrimage will be smooth and we'll go to heaven on a bed of roses.

But he is good to us in a multitude of ways. And of course, the long term, we will experience the beatific vision with his saints.

And there is nothing that can surpass that in goodness. So I think, brother, you should and can sing this, despite whatever challenges you may be facing.

And the Lord give you grace and strength to face those. Amen. And by the way,

Jack, I do apologize for laughing when I was reading your question because I don't know what you're going through, so much so that you have reached the point where you hate life.

So I hope that you are a member of a Bible -believing church with godly shepherds there, that you are seeking counsel from, and I hope that you are steered by God's good grace and his

Holy Spirit to find the joy in life that God intends you to have.

Not as Dr. Hagen has just said, not that this is going to be a bed of roses, as they say, ever, but that you will be able to even find joy in the midst of trials.

And so if you have any prayer requests that you would like to submit to me privately, send them to me by email.

And if you need a recommendation for a solid church, I do know of churches in Australia, and you'd have to give me your city, of course.

And I know some really solid, biblically faithful churches in that very large country.

And I have referred people in my audience in the past to faithful churches in Australia.

So, by the way, I am sorry that I cannot have a free copy of the

John Newton book shipped to you. Actually, you know something? I'm going to ship it to you.

I'm going to ship it to you at my own expense. CVBBS typically only ships winners in the

United States because of the high cost of shipping their free copies of books that we give away during author interviews.

And obviously we're not interviewing Josiah Bolt today since he hasn't been in heaven for many years.

But we are interviewing Dr. Hagen, and we are giving away Josiah Bolt's book.

But I will ship it to you at my own expense if you give me your full mailing address in Australia.

And thank you very much for your question. We have, I believe, a first -time question from a brother who is actually a member of the church where I'm a member,

Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. And this dear brother,

Ryan Gaiman, has been recently and publicly identified as a gifted brother who is doing the preaching at our church from time to time and will be doing so very soon.

I think this Sunday he is preaching. And I believe that the

Lord has given evidence where one of these days in the not -so -distant future, I'll be calling him

Pastor Ryan. But Ryan Gaiman says, please ask

Dr. Hagen what he thinks about the hymn, Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken.

We will sing this at Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle this Sunday. Yeah, that's one of Newton's classics as well.

It's a great hymn and speaks of Newton's love for the church, obviously taking the imagery of Zion and Jerusalem from the

Old Testament as an imagery of the church and really probably picking up the way in which

Paul and the Apostle John talk about the New Jerusalem, which they identified with the church.

It is really a fabulous hymn. It was also one of the only hymns that Newton published in 1779.

Okay. Well, thank you very much, Ryan. And looking forward to seeing you perhaps even tonight at prayer meeting.

Thanks for the first -time question. And by the way, since you are a first -time questioner, you are also receiving a free

New American Standard Bible, which the publishers of the NASB provide for our first -time questioners on this program.

Thanks a lot. Since Newton is a very well -known figure from history, even secular historians cite him in documentaries and so on, include him in their writings even if they don't share their love for Amazing Grace or they might even love it like, as I was saying at the beginning of the program, many secular recording artists love the words to the hymn

Amazing Grace even if they don't really believe in any of it. Can you tell us something that is not normally known about John Newton?

Oh, okay. Well, Newton is remembered, I think, primarily for the Amazing Grace and for his hymns.

But in his own day, Newton was regarded as probably the premier letter writer of the period.

We have a variety of social media today. We're participating here in one of them, the whole idea of a podcast, etc.

Newton used the social media of his day, which one of the key elements was letter writing.

And through his letters, Newton was instrumental in the conversion of a significant number of men and women.

Newton would either encounter them on some of his travels in the area around where he lived or others would be referred to him.

The author Hannah Moore, who was an author of what we would describe today as Harlequin romances, was converted through his letters.

Thomas Scott, a neighboring clergyman who becomes a major Bible commentator in the early 1800s, was converted through the letters that Newton said to him.

And that probably was his great skill as a biblical counselor through the post.

Newton also didn't like a body of music today that we love, which is

Handel's Messiah. He did not? No, he hated it. Really? When that was played in London, originally at its debut in Dublin, when it came to London, Newton was so distressed by scripture being used in his mind for entertainment, he preached a series of about 20 sermons against the book, against the body of music.

Wow. That's mind -blowing. Sometimes God's people, they sometimes make big mistakes.

Well, that is about as mind -blowing as Dr. Michael A.

G. Hagen not liking Tilgrim's Progress. That is true, correct?

That you don't like that allegory? That is true. I don't care for allegories.

But, yeah, Newton was, what he did was he took all the verses that Handel used in that body of music and he preached a sermon on each of them.

And basically it was a protest against using, in his mind, scripture for entertainment.

Now where was it that Newton primarily was preaching? Was he involved in outdoor preaching?

No. Was he the regular pulpit minister of Penang? He was a regular pulpit minister.

He was at St. Peter and St. Paul from 1765 to 1780, 1779 in Olney.

Olney is about an hour north of London today by car. It is a quintessential

English village. I've been there probably a dozen times. I was there this summer. And if Newton came back to Olney today, he'd recognize all the houses.

Wow. Buildings are all the same. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah, yeah.

And you can walk from his church to where Cooper lived in about five minutes, ten minutes, which we did.

I was with a tour group. And you can actually see the rectory where Newton wrote

Amazing Grace. His upstairs room where it can be pointed out where he penned the lines to what we call

Amazing Grace. And then when he went to London, he was at St. Mary Walnut, a very urban church, a very, very different clientele.

And by this time, he's becoming well -known and he would have attracted people like William Wilberforce, the great abolitionist

MP for Parliament. That's interesting that you ask that because we have another question by Fritz in Albany, New York.

Fritz says since John Newton abolished his involvement in the slave trade, eventually, did he have anything to do with the abolitionist movement?

And did he ever have correspondence with William Wilberforce? So you started to answer that question just now.

Yeah, he did. He was he was actually when Wilberforce, who also has a remarkable conversion,

Wilberforce was initially raised by Christian parents who were friends with Newton and Whitefield.

And he had heard Newton preach when he was a young boy. But then he was orphaned and he was raised by an aunt who was antithetical to anything

Christian. And so when he went up to Cambridge in the 1770s to study, he lived a riotous life of drinking, gambling, never went to one class, never listened to any lectures, never wrote any essays in four years and got a

B .A. So we sometimes complain about our universities. But man, and then after he finishes, he's got no idea what he wants to do with his life.

And so somebody said, why don't you go into politics? And in that period of time, the vote was restricted to men who are landowners of two or three acres over the age of 21,

I think it was. And so in the city of Hull, where he had grown up, there were only about 400 men who could vote.

So what he did was he threw a huge barbecue, got two huge cows, barbecued them, free beer, free beef to any but all the electors.

And he was voted in. He spent his first four years in Parliament doing nothing.

He was delighted when he got to the House of Parliament, he found most of his old buddies from Cambridge and they spent the time gambling.

In the summer of, I think it's 1778 or thereabouts, he undertakes what is known as the early 1780s.

He undertakes what is known as the Grand Tour, where for about four months he's going around Europe with his mother and his sister,

Berlin and Paris. And he decides to take a companion in his coach, who he doesn't realize has become an evangelical.

And the man asked him, can I bring something to read? And he brings Philip Doddridge's The Rise of Progress of Religion in the

Soul. And Wilberforce in his diary, you can see the progression from skepticism to faith as he listens to this.

When he's converted, he believes he should get out of politics. He doesn't know any evangelical ministers.

There's only two evangelical ministers in London who are Anglicans. Wow. John Newton and William Remain.

He hears about Newton. He remembered the name from his youth. And he goes to visit him, but he goes around the block three or four times before he gets the nerve to go up to his door.

He doesn't want to be seen knocking on the door of an evangelical. But he finally does, and Newton advises him,

God has placed you in this position for this time. Now it's at that point that as the following year or so,

Wilberforce becomes convinced that one of the goals that God has given him is the abolition of what is an abomination under heaven, namely the slave trade and slavery.

And he keeps in touch with Newton. Newton basically becomes his mentor until he dies in 1807.

Wow. That's amazing that in a city like London that there were only two evangelicals in the

Anglican church, an evangelical clergyman. And especially in that time, in that era.

Unbelievable. There were no evangelical bishops until the early 1800s, so they refused to ordain evangelicals.

Wow. Well, I'm going to have you just continue on that thread when we come back from our first –

I'm sorry, from our midway commercial break. And if anybody else would like to get in line, we already have a few waiting to have their questions answered by you.

But if anybody else wants to join them and ask a question of your own, our email address is

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Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. We have a question from Joey in New Rochelle.

That's an excellent segue to something that you brought up, Dr. Haken, right before the midway break.

You were talking about the fact that there were only two known evangelical

Anglican ministers in the entire city of London at the time of Newton's ministry.

And we have a listener, Joey in New Rochelle, New York, who says, can you please speak to the orthodoxy of Newton's core theological beliefs and his relationship with the

Church of England? And I'd like to add to that question my own question of clarification.

Today there is such a wide spectrum of Anglicanism going all the way from the left where you have utter apostates denying the pillar cores of Christianity and endorsing homosexuality and transgenderism and so forth.

Then you also have, on the other end of the spectrum, you have

Romanists that have existed with the

Oxford movements and the Tractarians and the Poussiates and all that. And they still exist today.

You could barely distinguish them from the Roman Catholic Church. And then you have strong, reformed, and Calvinistic confessional

Anglicans strongly adhering to the 39 Articles of Religion. And even amongst them, there are many differences between high and low church and so on.

Where on the orbit of Anglicanism was Newton? Yes, so Newton is what we would describe as an evangelical

Anglican, very definitely evangelical. He's in a stream of Anglicanism that begins, well,

I would argue is harmonious and consonant with the early reformers, men like Hugh Latimer, Cramner, John Hooper, Nicholas Ridley, men who argued for the necessity of conversion, who were opposed to the innovations that come into the

Church of Rome in the medieval period, who are solidly, in our minds today, evangelical.

Committed, yes, to an Episcopal Church government, where we would differ from them, but definitely committed at the heart to an evangelical expression of Christianity.

During the 18th century, well, during the 17th century, late 17th century and going into the 18th century, you find a significant falling off among the clergy.

And so you find men like Thomas Scott, who before his conversion was a Sassanian, a

Unitarian, or Daniel Rowland in Wales similarly, or men like William Grimshaw and Howard before his conversion was basically a drunk.

And God marvelously saved these men. There is no such thing as the

High Church as we know it today. You mentioned there the Tractarium movement. That's a movement that comes in the 1820s, 1830s, so after the time of Newton.

And so you really have two kind of major parties in one sense in the

Church of England. You have the evangelical Anglicans, and then you have a broad church, which is composed of, yes, there would be men who believed, but also a variety of men who become ministers for a variety of mercenary purposes.

The differences between somebody like Newton and Wesley and Whitefield is that Newton believed that his ministry would be primarily restricted to his parish, and he was not an itinerant.

Whitefield and Wesley were itinerant ministers, etc. And you start to get the development of a large -scale evangelical presence that emphasizes local church parish ministry.

And probably the man who exemplifies that is Charles Simeon, whom Newton knew from various meetings in London.

So Newton definitely is an evangelical Anglican, would have been horrified by the

Tractarium movement, would have been deeply opposed to it, and equally horrified by the godlessness that characterizes certain sectors of Anglicanism today.

In many respects, the future hopes of Anglicanism rest with the evangelical men that you find in Africa, the

Nigerians, the Kenyans, the Ugandans, who would share this sort of evangelical

Calvinism and evangelical Anglicanism of a Newton, and have in recent days been enormously critical of the

Archbishop of Canterbury and actually have, in a real sense, broken fellowship with him.

Now forgive me if you mentioned this in your explanation, and I missed it somehow, but when you say there were only two evangelical

Anglican ministers in London at the time of Newton, including Newton himself, and there was no high church

Romanist wing of the Anglican church yet, and there was no, obviously, in that day and age, you wouldn't have had the horrifying leftist apostasy that you see today, where you even have

Anglican ministers who are open atheists. What was the background of the majority of the

Anglican ministers in London that would put them in the category of non -evangelical?

Were they theologically sound, but just bearing no evidence of regeneration? Where did they land on that?

Yeah, most of them, a good number of them, would be what we would describe today as moralists. You do the

Ten Commandments, you live. Their homilies tended to be dry, not characterized by the sort of what in their minds described the evangelicals' enthusiasm and emotion.

Their homilies might be 10 -15 minutes. One of the things that Anglicanism suffered from during this period was that many of the churches were owned by, they were on the lands owned by aristocracy.

And so if you were an aristocrat, so let's say you're the Duke of Devonshire, and you've got four sons.

The eldest son alone inherits the entire estate. What are you going to do with the other three? Well, one of them might go into the army, one might go into the navy, and the other one, you would recommend, goes into the church, because you actually will have the living, you would own the living, of various village churches on your property that you could then appoint that man to.

And so many of the men who became Anglican ministers did so because they gave a roof over their head, a secure living, a housemaid to take care of all their, you know, needs in terms of food and meals, etc.,

cleaning the house. But they weren't committed in any way, shape, or form to the gospel. And so while you don't have the sort of, you know, sexual immorality that is being encouraged by various, maybe,

Anglican ministers today, you nonetheless do have a degree of apostasy.

And so, yeah, they're not evangelicals.

And men like Thomas Scott was definitely not an evangelical individual. He was a

Sassanian. And his first contact with Newton was that Newton found out there was a man dying in his parish.

And Thomas Scott, at the neighboring parish, Scott wasn't going to visit him.

So Newton went and started ministering to this dying man. Thomas Scott accosted him and said, what on earth are you up to?

And Newton said, well, you know, he needs Christian care and counsel.

And Scott told him, what's the use of doing that? I'll go visit him when he's dead and bury him.

But that conversation became the impetus for Thomas Scott ultimately being converted.

Okay. We have Floyd in Sugar Hill, Georgia.

Floyd asks, did Newton have any close relationships with ministers or other men of God in denominations outside of the

Anglican Church, like 18th century Baptists and others? Yeah, Newton was very close to a number of Baptist ministers, men like, as I've already mentioned right at the beginning,

John Ryland, Jr., whom he mentored. John Ryland, Jr., his father was John Connor Ryland.

Their personalities clashed. His father was a gospel minister, loved Whitefield, but very, very different personalities.

And John Ryland, Jr. eventually turned to John Newton as a counselor and advisor, as a spiritual mentor.

Newton was encouraging Will Carey. When Carey goes to India, Newton has some correspondence with Carey.

So Newton was very close to a number of Baptist ministers. He nearly became a

Congregationalist or a Baptist. He considered that for a period of time in the early 1760s.

He also was in correspondence with Dutch reform ministers, Scottish Presbyterian ministers, a man named

John Erskine in Scotland, who was kind of a paragon of evangelical revival. He was the main publishing conduit or influence of Jonathan Edwards' works in the

British Isles. John Erskine initially in Kirkintilloch near Glasgow.

And John Newton was in regular correspondence with a variety of ministers outside of the bounds of his own denomination.

Okay, we have Bobby in Spokane, Washington, who has a question.

What was it that drew John Newton to seek ordination in the

Anglican Church if it was so spiritually dead at the time? Yeah, I think

Newton felt that it was a place where he could minister. Baptists and Congregationalists were a fairly limited number of churches in England.

Technically, everybody was in the Anglican Church. Probably 85 % of people in England were baptized at this time in the

Anglican Church. So Newton felt that as long as he could preach the gospel freely, which eventually he was able to, that it was a place where he should minister.

I don't think he's so much convinced of Episcopal denomination.

Episcopacy, that's one of the pillars of Anglicanism. He obviously favors infant baptism at the time, but he would see that as a sign that has to be embraced by the individual later in life.

So in his mind, baptism was not baptismal regeneration, but would have been a sign that the person was within the covenant, but they had to embrace that eventually by conversion.

Similar to a Presbyterian view. I think in some ways he would have seen the Anglican Church as a great place to evangelize from.

Great. Let's see. We have another question for you from Terry in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

And Terry says, What was the upbringing of Newton as far as his home life?

Forgive me if I missed this because I just tuned in. Yeah. So his mother,

Elizabeth, was an evangelical congregationalist who took Newton to hear gospel preaching.

So Newton would have heard Whitefield as a very young boy. But she dies just before he's seven years of age.

And so the influence upon him waned. But when God awakens

Newton to his state outside of Christ, a lot of what he remembered, a lot of what his mother had taught him, sought to teach him, came back to him.

So his early years, very early years, would have been drenched in the gospel. But then his father takes him to sea, into the company of sailors and the godlessness and immorality of that world.

Let's see. We have Gail in Waterbury, Connecticut. And Gail asks,

Was John Newton ever respected by his peers who were theologians as an equal in the academic area of life?

Probably not. No, Newton wouldn't have regarded himself really as a theologian.

He's a gospel preacher. He's a pastor. He is, above all, a man who is a spiritual counselor.

That really is where he shines. During his heyday, the town of Aldney had about 3 ,000 people.

The Congregationalist Church had about 1 ,000 that went there. The Baptist Church, where John Sutcliffe was, a very close friend of William Carey, that's

William Carey's first pastor, they had about 1 ,000. And about 1 ,000 went to hear Newton.

But by common recognition, Newton was not a superb preacher. He was good, but he wasn't on the level of a

George Whitefield. And he certainly wasn't, in a real sense, an academic theologian, say, like a

John Gill or, you know, later in the 19th century, people like Dabney or Dagg or James Prediger Boyce or Hodge or B .B.

Warfield. But his writings are nonetheless richly founded in biblical theology.

But he wouldn't have regarded himself as a biblical theologian. He's a shepherd of souls.

He's a pastor. And let's see here.

We have Amethyst in Jupiter, Florida, who asks,

Do you know of any angry and heated rivalries that existed between John Newton and other ministers in his day?

No. No, Newton was one of these men that when you read his writings and you read his life, he was a man who excelled in those virtues of kindness, gentleness.

There was a meekness about him. There's also a strength, of course. But I cannot think of any controversies, per se, that Newton was involved in that involved bitterness or bitter invective.

Newton was very wary of getting involved in controversies in print, unless they were fundamental to the gospel.

One of the men that, for instance, angers a lot of people in this period is a man named William Huntington, who was a doctoral antinomian and maybe even a practical antinomian.

And he arranged bitter attacks on all kinds of people, including

John Ryland's father and John Ryland. And Ryland was going to write a book against him, and Newton advised him not to do it.

That in the words of maybe a southern saying, if you wrestle with a pig, the pig loves it and you'll get dirty.

And there's a real wisdom about Newton. He is solidly, he's quite prepared to take his stand on first order theological truths and not back down from them.

But he's also very wary of getting involved in controversies that really don't, they're not beneficial.

Now, going back to perhaps some more clarification on Joey's question,

Joey from New Rochelle. Was Newton a thoroughgoing

Calvinist? I know that the 39 articles are very Calvinistic.

They are clearly not Arminian or Romanist.

Did he have a conviction about that? And I'm assuming that since your answer that you just gave, he was not involved in any heated exchanges like George Whitfield was with John Wesley.

Although I think most of the heat came from Wesley's side, unless you know something

I don't. But where was he on the orbit of Calvinism, Arminian dispute?

He was a confirmed Calvinist. But as he said once, he said, I like my

Calvinism in my tea. I like my Calvinism as I like my sugar in my tea spread throughout the tea.

And by which he means that a Calvinism informed and shaped all of his preaching and teaching of his life.

But he probably in his public ministry would not have done what, say,

John Gill, who is an older, basically John Gill was his contemporary. I mean, Gill publicly wrote a book called

The Doctrines of Grace in which he defended the five points.

You don't find Newton doing that. But he is definitely a Calvinist. He would strongly disagree with Wesley.

But he would be able to work with a man, with Methodists in the same way that Whitfield was able to work with these men because they accepted total depravity and justification by faith alone.

And Whitfield felt he could work with Wesley. And Newton would have had the same sort of perspective.

There was in his day a growing division between the followers of Wesley and Whitfield, especially after Whitfield's death in 1770.

And Newton tried to bridge that gap. Yeah. Was he at Whitfield's funeral?

I know that he prior to his death asked Wesley to preach at his funeral, which he did, even though they were – even though they had –

Well, first of all, Whitfield's funeral was in the States, if you remember.

Oh, that's right. That's right. Yeah. And so the funeral sermon that Wesley gave in London, I wouldn't think

Newton would have been there. He would have just at that point been five years in his ministry at Oldney.

I mean, today you could drive down from Oldney to London in an hour, but in those days it would have taken more than a day.

And so I wouldn't think he would have been there. We have a return question from the aforementioned

Joey in New Rochelle, New York. My question about the orthodoxy of Newton's beliefs came because I was surprised to hear, but I don't know myself what that – let's see.

I don't know myself that he may have held some non -orthodox core views, perhaps privately.

Maybe it is debated or just not true. I've never heard anything like that.

OK. And I'm not a first -class Newton expert, but I've read a lot about Newton.

I've read an article or two on him. I've written widely about the men with whom he labored who were

Baptists, men like John Ryland. And I have never heard anything that would cast aspersions on Newton's basic orthodoxy.

And I understand – I think it might have been the movie

Amazing Grace about Wilberforce primarily.

And there is a depiction of John Newton, I believe, toward the end of the movie where he is completely blind.

Is that true, that he went blind? Yes, he does go blind. To the point that he is unable to see distances, etc.

He's not completely without sight, but he is blind. I wasn't too happy with the depiction of Newton in that movie.

The movie was a good movie. It took a lot of license with historical facts.

For instance, they're singing at the wedding of Wilberforce, Amazing Grace, to the tune that we sing it to in America.

But that tune was not adopted until the 1820s, so about 40 years after Wilberforce's wedding.

But it's a very good character study of Wilberforce, and it really does capture that man in all his remarkableness.

That puts an idea in my head for you. Maybe one of these days you'll do a video documentary or even a book on correcting classic movies about church history that have glaring errors in them.

Yeah, that would be a good idea. I think that would be fun. A lot of people, sadly, learned their history from movies.

Yes. Even though this has nothing to do with the theme of our show today, what did you think about that movie that came out in the early 2000s,

Luther, the one starring… Joseph Fiennes?

Yes. I was amazed at how good that was. Yes, so my friend

William Webster said the same thing. I was really amazed. I was not looking forward to it because Hollywood normally doesn't capture it, but they did a really good job.

The only problem with that movie is they compressed the years from around 1721 – sorry, 1521 to 1529 in about 10 minutes.

And if you don't know any of the details, you can get lost pretty quickly.

But yeah, it's very well done. Yeah, I think the only problem that William Webster found in the movie – because he loved the movie as well – but I think the only thing that he found historically inaccurate other than what you just mentioned was that there was a scene of a worship service where people were sitting in pews.

And that is something that did not develop at that point. Exactly. And most people worshipped standing up.

Correct. Very correct. Yeah. By the way, folks, I believe

I may have stopped mentioning, but I wanted to let you know that everybody who has submitted a question today will receive a brand -new copy of the book that I had mentioned earlier,

The Life of John Newton by Josiah Bull, compliments of Banner of Truth Publishing.

And we will need from you your full mailing addresses so that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

can ship those books out to you. And let me know if you are first -time questioners because all of our first -time questioners will receive a brand -new

New American Standard Bible as well. So we hope to hear from all of you with that information soon so that we can notify cvbbs .com

and get those books shipped out to you in a timely fashion. We are now going to our final commercial break.

And if you have a question, I would strongly urge you to submit it quickly because we're rapidly running out of time.

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least.

City and state and country of residence. Now we're going to hear a word from one of our sponsors that just recently renewed their advertising contract with us.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Sorensen, if you just tuned us in. Our guest has been for the entirety of our program today,

Dr. Michael A .G. Hagen. And we have been celebrating the life and legacy of John Newton.

And this month, or last month, depending upon what calendar you're using, marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of John Newton, the hymn writer of Amazing Grace.

And we have Charlotte in West Ashley, South Carolina.

Charlotte wants to know, What are your favorite hymns, if any, by John Newton that are largely unknown to the general public and church at large?

That's a really good question. Probably the two that were mentioned earlier would be my favorites of Newton.

And the ones that I would know best are the ones that would be well known of Newton. Yeah, I can't think of one that wouldn't fall into that category of being something that is fairly well known.

Okay. Well, thank you, Charlotte. And please give us your full mailing address in West Ashley, South Carolina, so that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cbbbs .com,

can ship you out the last copy that we have to give away.

And if you are a first -time questioner, please let us know so we can also include in that package a brand new

New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the NASB. And if you want to check out

Banner of Truth, who published this volume, as well as many, many, many other very important volumes from the history of our church, go to banneroftruth .org.

Banneroftruth .org. And if you want to look at this book description particularly, type in the search engine

John Newton. And we thank Banner of Truth once again for their generosity to us in giving us these free copies of The Life of John Newton by Josiah Bull.

I really want to make sure, Dr. Haykin, that you let our listeners know what you most want etched in their hearts and minds before this program is over on The Life of John Newton.

Yeah, there's probably a number of things. But the one that comes to mind is some words that Newton says towards the end of his life when his sight is significantly reduced.

And he was probably resting with a number of the sort of physical challenges that we begin to experience as we age.

He said at one point, I may have forgotten many things, but this

I remember, that I am a great sinner and the Lord Jesus Christ is a great Savior. Amen.

Amen. Amen. And that reminds me of a quote by Christopher Love that I always conclude

Iron, Sharp, and Zion radio with every day. In fact, I believe I have been quoting

Christopher Love with this statement ever since we first launched in 2005, that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. And I remember the first time that I heard that quote by Christopher Love was when

I heard the speaker at a Bible conference,

Don Kistler. I don't know if you know Don. Don… Kistler. What was his last name?

K -I -S -T -L -E -R. No, I don't. He was the founder of a popular reform publishing ministry that I think is now called

Northampton Press. And originally he had a publishing ministry that he started called

Solideo Gloria Publishing. And I can remember when Don Kistler quoted

Christopher Love during a conference on the Puritans, I just started uncontrollably weeping.

That doesn't happen with me often, but it did that time. And the other time

I can remember publicly, openly weeping like that was the first time I ever heard the hymn,

Before the Throne of God Above, when I was at a conference in New York City. But I want to make sure that our listeners have your contact information.

I know that the website of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky is sbts .edu.

And how would specifically, when our listeners are investigating that website, would they find out more details about you and your ministry and everything that you have to offer?

Yeah, they could just simply punch into the query line, Michael Haken or Andrew Fuller Center.

There's a full display there of not only the sort of things that I've done in terms of writing, but also a testimony and some live videos.

Now, I understand that you are also a part of a Christian publishing ministry.

I think that you might be bringing primarily back old works of great men of God from the past back into print.

And I believe, if I'm not mistaken, it's a Canadian -based ministry. Yeah, so we founded this back about 25 years ago,

Joshua Press. And it's now an imprint of H &E Publishing. Hesed and Emeth is what the

H &E stand for. But H &E Publishing has basically bought it over. And so I'm still on the board of directors there and give some direction as to what is published.

But yeah, I'm still very closely aligned with that. And then I am involved with another publishing house called

Heritage Seminary Press, which is part of Heritage Theological Seminary in Cambridge, Ontario.

Can you give us the websites for both of those? Yes, I would think if you put in Heritage Seminary Cambridge, that would come up.

I'm not exactly – I don't have off the bat what the website would be there. With H &E, it would be

H &E, H, the ampersand sign, which stands for and, E, publishing that you need to put in.

Well, I want to thank you for being such an extraordinary guest, as you always are.

I look forward to many return visits from you in the future. And I want to remind our listeners, some of you have already made sure that you have given me your full mailing addresses so that you can receive the book that we have been providing,

The Life of John Newton by Josiah Bull, Compliments of Banner of Truth.

And the Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com, will be shipping those copies out to you.

Make sure you tell us if you are a first -time questioner also so that we can include a free

New American Standard Bible with that delivery. And I want to remind all men in ministry leadership that you are invited to the next

Iron Trip and Zion Radio Free Pastors Launching. And this is going to be featuring, once again, for the second time at my luncheon,

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries. And everything is free, not only the admission, but the lunch.

And every single attendee is going to leave that church where it's being held,

Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania. Everybody is going to leave that place with a heavy sack of free brand -new books donated by Christian publishers all over the

United States and the United Kingdom. Everything is free at the insistence of my precious late wife,

Julie, who started these pastors' luncheons back in the 1990s, and we've been doing them ever since.

And since she went home to be with the Lord in 2010, I continue these luncheons in loving memory of her and in tribute to her.

So please, if you can make it on Thursday, September 18th at Church of the

Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

If a pastor's luncheon in the subject line, there is also going to be a speaking engagement the following Sunday at Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, featuring

Dr. James R. White as well. And many of you who are pastors who normally have your own worship services at 11 a .m.

or earlier, you might be able to visit us for this speaking engagement because our worship services are at 1 .30

p .m., because we share the building with Carlisle Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, who has their morning worship services before us.

So if you want more details on Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, go to trbccarlisle .org.

Well, I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write in questions.

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives, as I mentioned earlier in that precious quote by Puritan Christopher Love, that Jesus Christ is a far greater