Today John Newton is best known for his inspiring hymn "Amazing Grace," which is probably the best known hymn ever written. In his own day he was one of England's most prominent preachers. Before his conversion, Newton's life had become so debauched, irreverent, and immoral that even his fellow sailors were shocked by his conduct and coarse speech. Yet, Newton would come to experience that amazing grace that he wrote about and it transformed his life, and made him a preacher of the Gospel. Newton never ceased to be amazed at God's work in His life, and he frequently admitted that God had used his passionate love for his wife Mary as a motive and means for his spiritual development.

John Falls Head Over Heels
John Newton's and Mary Catlett's mothers had been the best of friends and when the two children were infants had talked about their marrying each other. But Newton's mother died when John was seven, and when his father remarried, the Catletts and Newtons drifted apart. John's father was a sea captain, and John followed his father into a life at sea. When he was seventeen he went to see the Catletts again, and when he laid eyes on fourteen-year-old Mary, he lost his heart to her. For several years John led the life of a rebellious sailor. He became a "freethinker," rejecting the Scriptures and the Christian truths once learned from his mother. His passion for Mary seemed the only element of purity in his life, but he knew he was totally unworthy of her.

The Slave Trader Prays
John was a sailor in the slave trade off the African coast and participated in the cruelties and horrors of that business. On one return voyage to England, Newton was caught in such a fierce storm that all aboard despaired of life. The Scriptures John had once learned at his mother's knee returned to his mind, and he began to hope that Jesus could deliver him, dreadful sinner that he was. For the first time in years John sought the Lord in prayer, and on March 21, 1748, a date he remembered yearly for the rest of his life, as Newton wrote, "the Lord sent from on high and delivered me out of deep waters." John began to grow as a young Christian, seeking the Lord in prayer and reading and meditating on the Scriptures. Mary recognized the change in her childhood friend; the two were married on February 1, 1750. Their life together for the next forty years was filled with a boundless love; John always recognized this special love was among the greatest of the gifts of Providence.

Marriage Honorable, Comfortable
In 1793, three years after Mary's death, John published a two-volume collection of letters he had sent to Mary over the years. He wanted to give public testimony of thanks to God for such a treasure as his wife, "for uniting our hearts by such tender ties, and for continuing her to me for so long." Newton published his letters to her as a memorial to her and as an example "that marriage, when the parties are united by affection, and the general conduct is governed by religion and prudence, is not only an honorable but a comfortable state."

After his marriage, Newton was captain of his own ship, and he had to be separated from Mary for months at a time. The two corresponded constantly. Repeatedly in his letters John wrote how their love and marriage increased his thankfulness and gratefulness to the Lord:

. . when I indulge myself with a particular thought of you, it usually carries me on farther, and brings me upon my knees to bless the Lord, for giving me such a treasure, and to pray for your peace and welfare . . . when I take up my pen, and begin to consider what I shall say, I am led to think of the goodness of God, who has made you mine, and given me a heart to value you. Thus my love to you, and my gratitude to him, cannot be separated. . . . All other love, that is not connected with a dependence on God, must be precarious. To this want, I attribute many unhappy marriages.

Happy though he was in his love for Mary, Newton never wanted their love to be a substitute for or take the place of their love for God. He felt that many of the problems people had in their marriages were caused by people trying to find all their happiness and fulfillment in a human relationship apart from their relationship with the Lord. While at sea in 1753 John wrote Mary,