John Newton

John Newton spent his youth at sea, was pressed into the Royal Navy, flogged for deserting, and ended up captain of a slave ship — a trade he kept working for years after a storm off Ireland in 1748 first turned him toward God. His conscience woke slowly, and he never pretended otherwise.

Ordained at last in 1764, he took the poor parish of Olney, where he and his neighbor, the poet William Cowper, wrote hymns for the weekly prayer meeting; Newton's contribution included 'Amazing Grace.' Late in life, as rector of St Mary Woolnoth in London, he published Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade, an unflinching account of what he had personally done, and gave evidence to Parliament. He became the trusted counselor of a young member of Parliament named William Wilberforce, and lived just long enough to hear the slave trade abolished.

His own epitaph, which he wrote, calls him 'a servant of slaves in Africa' who was 'preserved, restored, pardoned.'