John Newton: Quotes about God

John Newton was Anglican clergyman and hymn-writer. Explore interesting quotes on god.

John Newton: 48 quotes12 likes

“I am not what I ought to be — ah, how imperfect and deficient! I am not what I wish to be — I abhor what is evil, and I would cleave to what is good! I am not what I hope to be — soon, soon shall I put off mortality, and with mortality all sin and imperfection. Yet, though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say, I am not what I once was; a slave to sin and Satan; and I can heartily join with the apostle, and acknowledge, "By the grace of God I am what I am."”

John Newton

As quoted in The Christian Pioneer (1856) edited by Joseph Foulkes Winks, p. 84. Also in The Christian Spectator, vol. 3 (1821), p. 186 http://books.google.com/books?id=mv4oAAAAYAAJ&dq=ah%2C%20how%20imperfect%20and%20deficient!%20I%20am%20not%20what%20I%20wish%20to%20be&pg=PA186#v=onepage&q=ah,%20how%20imperfect%20and%20deficient!%20I%20am%20not%20what%20I%20wish%20to%20be&f=false <br class="br">Often paraphrased as I am not the man I ought to be, I am not the man I wish to be, and I am not the man I hope to be, but by the grace of God, I am not the man I used to be."'

“God sometimes does His work with gentle drizzle, not storms.”

John Newton

Source: Amazing Grace

“The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who call'd me here below,
Will be forever mine.”

John Newton Olney Hymns

Olney Hymns (1779), Amazing Grace

“There is many a thing which the world calls disappointment; but there is no such thing in the dictionary of faith. What to others are disappointments are to believers intimations of the will of God.”

John Newton

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 281.

“When we've been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we'd first begun.”

John Newton

These lines were not written by Newton. They have often been accreted to various hymns, including "Amazing Grace", since the mid-nineteenth century.
Misattributed