1779 March 30
My dear Madam,
I believe my last letter passed your favour of ye 20 February on the road, and I think conveyed something like an answer to the principal subject of it, before I saw it.
Your letter now before me, like some of your former, and like many of David’s psalms, begins with complaint, but as you go on, the clouds dispel, the prospect brightens and you speak the language of faith and hope. Indeed my dear Madam, you remind me of the proverb which says, Some people cannot see the wood for the trees. Some of the heavy charges as you account them, which you bring against yourself, are what I number amongst the surest and most indisputable marks of true grace, and appear to me descriptive of that character in which the Lord takes delight: a broken and contrite spirit. [1] I might perhaps allow, that your complaints indicate that your faith is not of the strongest; but when you would infer from them that you have no faith at all, I am constrained to contradict you point blank. I wish you not to think, that a growing sense of your exceeding sinfulness and inability is a small attainment. I deem it a great one; it is precisely that, without which all other seeming attainments are nothing worth in the sight of him, who sees us as we are.
I have not time at present to combat all the objections you raise against your own peace, nor is it needful, since in the close of your letter you drop them and express a comfortable sense of the power and grace of Christ. Only as you ask, From whence can all this slavish inordinate fear arise, but from unpardoned guilt and a nature unrenewed, I answer, Neither from the one nor from the other – but from the remnant of unbelief which all believers share with you in, from constitutional lowness of spirits, and from the temptations of Satan, who loves, so far as he is permitted, to worry those, over whom he can no longer rule.
Dr and Mrs Ford are now with us, and we hope soon to be with them. If the Lord please we purpose setting out for Leicester on Tuesday next, and to be in Melton ye 22nd April, possibly sooner, but then certainly, if not providentially permitted. [2] I hope we shall stay there two Sundays at least. The Doctor says Mr Gardiner has promised to visit Melton. If it should suit him and you to come while we are there, we shall think ourselves doubly happy in our visit. If not, I cannot promise that we shall be able to wait on you at Leasingham, though we shall most certainly have a strong desire. But if you could meet us at Melton, we should take it as a great favour, we might have more of your company, and in some respects to more advantage, as you would be happy to see the flock and the Shepherd of Melton upon his own ground. Mrs Newton’s health is so precarious, that it is possible, we shall be glad to make Melton the end of our progress.
The Doctor and Mrs Ford commission me to invite you and Mr Gardiner in their name and join with Mrs Newton and myself in a tender of affectionate respects to him, and to you and ours to Mr H Collins.
I am Madam,
Your obedient and obliged servant
John Newton
Olney ye 30 March 79
[Published in “L'Observateur Chrétien” Island of Jersey 14 September 1833]
[Published as ‘No. 5’, it excludes the last 2 paragraphs on the Fords]
Endnotes:
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[1] |
Psalm 51:17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. |
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[2] |
The Fords arrived in Olney on Saturday 27 March 1779, staying until the following Thursday. The Newtons set out on Tuesday 6 April for Northampton, Creaton, Market Harborough [visiting Baptist Robert Hall snr (1728–1791) in Arnsby], Leicester and Melton Mowbray, returning home on 8 May. |
Acknowledgements:
Morgan Museum and Library MA 733.8
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