Tag Archives: John Catlett

John Newton – A Contrast Between Living for Today and For Eternity

31 May

As I said before, I wish you success in your business. I would propose nothing inconsistent with a due regard to it. But can I bound my desires for you within such narrow limits? Allow me to wish you more lasting riches, greater honours, and better pleasures than this world can afford. Alas! what a poor acquisition to be what is usually called a thriving man for a few years, and then to drop unawares into an unknown eternity. How often do we see that when a man has just compassed his point, made his fortune, and is about to sit down to enjoy all his heart can wish, he is hastily called away! What a contrast between living to-day in affluence and pleasure, regardless of that great God who has made us, and to-morrow perhaps to be summoned away to appear, naked and alone, before his tribunal, to give an account what use we have made of the talents so long entrusted to us! I pray God to impress the thought upon your heart before it is too late. I cannot but think there will be something within you suggesting while you read, that what I hint may possibly be true.

~John Newton~


The Letters of John Newton – To the Mr. John Catlett (Edinburgh, Scotland; The Banner of Truth Trust; 2007) p. 31-32.

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John Newton – May You Be Added To the Trophies of Rich, Free, and Sovereign Grace

17 May

[Pleading with his brother-in-law who had just recovered from a sickness]

I used a wrong word when I spoke of your recovery. Dear brother, look upon it as no more than a REPRIEVE; for you carry the sentence of death about with you still; and unless you should be cut off (which God of his infinite mercy prevent) by a sudden stroke, you will as surely lie on a dying bed as you have now got up from a bed of sickness. And remember, too (I can hardly bear to write it), that should you neglect my admonitions, they will all tend to render you more inexcusable. I have delivered my own soul by faithfully warning you. But if you will not examine the matter with that seriousness which it deserves,–if you will not look up to God, the former of your body and the preserver of your spirit, for direction and assistance how to please Him,–if you will have your reading and your conversation only on one side of the question,–if you will suffer mercies and providences, afflictions and deliverances, to pass unimproved and unacknowledged, and live in the world as though you were created only to eat, sleep, and play, and after a course of years to be extinguished like the snuff of a candle,–why then, you must abide by the consequences. But, assuredly, sooner or later, God will meet you. My hearty, daily, constant prayer is, that it may be in a way of mercy, and that you may be added to the number of the trophies of rich, free, and sovereign grace. Amen.

~John Newton~



The Letters of John Newton – To Mr. John Catlett (Edinburgh, Scotland; The Banner of Truth Trust; 2007) p. 28.

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