Newtonisms

As to myself, it is given me to trust in the Lord Jesus for life and salvation – I know he is both willing and able to save. Upon him as an All-sufficient Saviour and upon his Word of promise I build my hope, believing that he will not suffer me to be put to shame.

My exercise of grace is faint, my consolations small, my heart is full of evil, my chief sensible burdens are a wild ungoverned imagination and a strange sinful backwardness to reading the Scriptures and to secret prayer. These have been my complaints for many years, and I have no less cause of complaint than formerly.

But my eye and my heart is to Jesus. His I am, Him I desire to serve, to Him I this day would devote and surrender myself anew.

John Newton, January 1, 1773