John Newton (1725-1807), converted slave-trader, preacher, and hymn-writer, was one of the most colorful figures in the Evangelical Awakening of the eighteenth century. 'Once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa', he once wrote for his epitaph, 'by the rich mercy of Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy.' "In few writers are Christian doctrine, experience and practice more happily balanced than in the author of these Letters, and few write with more simplicity, piety and force." - C. H. Spurgeon