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Picks up the story of conversion narrative among evangelical Anglicans through a close reading of three case studies. Associated with the town of Olney, John Newton, William Cowper, and Thomas Scott lived near one another in the north-eastern corner of Buckinghamshire, where Newton and Scott were clergymen in the Church of England, and Cowper was a local gentleman-poet living on patronage. Like most evangelical Anglicans, they were moderate Calvinists when they wrote their narratives in the 1760s and 1770s, and the Calvinistic order of salvation provided a model for their self-understanding. However, in their autobiographies we find a vivid display of personality that appears not despite the presence of a model, but because of it. Within a similar theological framework, Newton interpreted his life typologically, Scott intellectually, and Cowper psychologically—each offering a unique expression of personal adherence to a common gospel.

This chapter deals with Hannah More's religious conversion, which is seen as part of the wider story of the 18th century Evangelical revival. The preachers who most influenced her were Thomas Scott and the former slave-trader, John Newton. In 1782, she attempted to bring together the two halves of her life by publishing Sensibility (dedicated to Frances Boscawen) and Sacred Dramas. In the late 1780s, she became involved with the abolitionist circle around Sir Charles and Lady Middleton and Elizabeth Bouverie at Teston in Kent. She became friends with William Wilberforce and her poem, Slavery (1788), was timed to coincide with the start of the campaign to abolish the slave trade. At the same time she became part of the growing movement for the reformation of manners when she published Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society in support of the newly founded Proclamation Society.

This chapter describes how William Wilberforce became a Member of Parliament first for Hull and then, in the election of 1784 the Pittite Member for Yorkshire. It deals with his religious conversion under the influence of John Newton. The conversion is set in three contexts: the eighteenth-century Evangelical revival, the structure of conversion narratives, and the late Enlightenment culture of sensibility. It is argued that Wilberforce’s commitment to the abolition of the slave trade arose directly out of his conversion. His decision to take up the cause is dated more precisely than preceding accounts. The rhetorical strategies behind his 1789 abolition speech are analysed in the light of recent work on the language of abolition, and it is shown that his arguments were deeply influenced by Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. The end of the chapter returns to Wilberforce’s personal concerns.

This chapter explores how and why narratives of the abolitionist John Newton evolved within the Cowper and Newton Museum between the centenary of his death in 1907 and the bicentenary in 2007. Using discourse and exhibition analysis, it seeks to understand how changing discourses surrounding the memory of Newton and the wider representation of slavery affected how abolition is narrated in the museum. In doing so, it examines the complex relationship between local and global narratives of abolition and slavery.

William J. Hardee's Corps attacked along the Buck Head and Atlanta Road at about 3 p.m., July 20, with about 15,000 troops. The only force standing in the war was John Newton's division of the Fourth Corps, about 3,000 strong, which was partially fortified in a good position. Hardee handled his attack poorly; one of his divisions never even found the enemy, another nearly outflanked Newton's left but was repulsed, and another only advanced part way to Newton's right wing then stopped in a ravine and fired for the rest of the day. Hardee's reserve division, commanded by Patrick R. Cleburne, was about to renew the attack when Hood called on Hardee to send a division to the east side of Atlanta to oppose McPherson's approach to the city. Hardee Cleburne's Division. Hardee's officers and men generally did not press their attacks vigorously and Hood had some degree of justification in later blaming him for a lack of faith in his plan. The Confederates never discovered that a gap of a mile and a half existed between Newton's division and the rest of the Fourth Corps which was operating with Schofield's Army of the Ohio.

This chapter presents Amazing Grace (How Sweet the Sound), a hymn composed by John Newton. Known for his preaching, Newton also devoted considerable time to writing hymns. His sermons often originated from the lyrics of his hymns. In 1767, Newton collaborated with his friend William Cowper for a collection of hymns that would eventually be published as Olney Hymns two years later. In “Faith's Review and Expectation,” also known as “Amazing Grace,” he expressed his overwhelming joy for divine grace. The hymn begins with a reference to 1 Chronicles 17:16-7, which describes King David's ecstatic response to the Prophet Nathan's announcement that God promised to establish an eternal kingdom from his line.

Most of the rest of Thomas' Army of the Cumberland crossed to the south side of Peach Tree Creek on the morning of July 20. While the Fourteenth Corps solidified a good position for defensive action only Geary's division of Joseph Hooker's Twentieth Corps advance to the best defensive ground to the left of the Fourteenth Corps. Hooker acted as if there was no need to hurry defensive arrangements and thus two of his divisions lounged in the bottomland on the south side of the creek rather than aligning themselves with Geary's exposed division. John Newton's division of the Fourth Corps also took up a strong defensive position to Hooker's left and was ready for action. Hood finalized his attack plan, hoping to catch Thomas after the Federals had crossed the creek but before they could fortify their positions—except for Hooker's two divisions, it already was too late to accomplish that goal. Hood had to further delay the attack from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. due to McPherson's unexpectedly early arrival near the east side of Atlanta, forcing the Army of Tennessee to shift its line to the right to confront him.

This chapter shows that the fulfillment of heart’s desires when they converge with thriving is also necessary for the true self of a person. If she loves God but God does not love her, then one of her deepest heart’s desires will remain unfulfilled because she loves unrequitedly. On Christian doctrine, God loves human beings who have it in their power not to love God, so that God may have unfulfilled desires. But God meets the conditions for love with regard to every human person. So, when a person comes to love God, she does not love unrequitedly; and her deepest heart’s desires are fulfilled. The transformative experiences of John Newton and Winston in George Orwell’s 1984 illustrate the point.

This chapter presents excerpts from John Newton's An Authentic Narrative of Some Remarkable and Interesting Particulars in the Life of ******** (1764). Best known for his hymn “Amazing Grace,” Newton made other significant contributions to evangelicalism. In the Authentic Narrative, Newton confessed his blasphemous language and implicit immorality as a seaman in the mid-1740s. During one evening in March 1748, while aboard a ship called the Greyhound that traveled to Brazil and Newfoundland on its way to England, Newton was awakened by a storm that battered the ship. This event led him to pray for the first time in years for his survival, bringing him to a renewed sense of piety. That fateful evening is when Newton dated his conversion.

As Hardee's Corps and Stewart's Army of Mississippi assailed Thomas's Army of the Cumberland north of Atlanta, the rest of Sherman's army group continued to inch forward to the east and northeast of Atlanta. Schofield's Army of the Ohio and two divisions of Oliver O. Howard's Fourth Corps worked through tangled vegetation in their effort to link Thomas with McPherson's Army of the Tennessee. They made limited progress, essentially coming up to the developing Confederate position known as the Peach Tree Creek Line (which faced north) and the Confederate Outer Line (which faced east). Elements of Howard's and Schofield's commands skirmished with troops from Benjamin F. Cheatham's Corps (formerly commanded by Hood), which was responsible for holing the far right of the Peach Tree Creek Line and all of the Outer Line. But a gap continued to exist between Howard and John Newton's division. Fortunately for the Federals, the Confederates never became aware of this potentially dangerous hole in Sherman's formation. McPherson continued to move along the Georgia Railroad toward Atlanta, allowing a small force of Confederate cavalry under Joseph Wheeler to slow his pace. By July 20, he came within striking distance of the Outer Line.

The battle of Peach Tree Creek was the largest tactical offensive mounted by the Army of Tennessee since the battle of Chickamauga ten months before. Soldier morale was depressed by the loss of their beloved commander, Joseph E. Johnson. While most men had no real opinion of John Bell Hood, they knew that the army would now take the offensive. Many Confederates were reluctant to close with the enemy on July 20. Hardee's Corps failed to press home its advantage of manpower over John Newton's division. At least one third of Winfield S. Featherston's Brigade refused to accompany their comrades in pressing home the assault against William T. Ward's division. More or the less the same was true along the rest of the battle line. In contrast, most Federals fought with determination that day. Hood also developed an attack plan that was too complicated as he struggled to master the complexities of army level command. Efforts to preserve and mark the battlefield for posterity were mounted after the war, especially in the 1930s, but they mostly failed and the battlefield largely has been consumed by the explosive growth of Atlanta in the twentieth century.

This chapter describes how Ellis was able to substitute two years in the workplace for compulsory military service, before going up to Downing College, and then his first impressions of Leavis, with his open-necked shirt and general athletic demeanour. He explains why he and his fellow students objected to being called ‘Leavisites’, when the pedagogic model Leavis proposed was of interaction between equals: ‘A judgement is personal or it is nothing’ ; but also the way Leavis's teaching in seminars tended to infringe his own principles, especially when compared with the long pondered silences in the author's one-to one tutorials with John Newton. Yet although Leavis may have been inclined to lecture rather than discuss, the wit and humour he displayed in doing so was only one of the many reasons his seminars were so fascinating.

The book as a whole emphasizes a productive discontinuity between various eighteenth-century poets and both their Miltonic sources and their Romantic successors. Two interludes, however, qualify this picture by showing how a mortalist poetics, shared by the late Milton and some early Romantic writers, persisted in between the two in certain quarters of Enlightenment England. The second interlude interprets Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751), still perhaps the eighteenth century’s most famous poem, alongside William Cowper’s Sapphic lyric “Hatred and Vengeance, My Eternal Portion” (1774). While Gray’s elegy presents a disembodied heaven as no freer or happier than a common burial site, and worse for being more isolated, Cowper’s bleak poem imagines that hell offers his soul a kind of protection that he lacks during his embodied life on the earth’s surface.