Forms are sinful when in prose?
Must my form be deemed a crime
Merely for the want of rhyme?
Newton’s charity went a good deal beyond that of the ordinary evangelical of his own and of many a later day. In the Apologia he expresses with vigour his conviction that ‘the Lord has a people’ among the members of the Roman and Greek Churches.
I should hope that they who, having themselves tasted that the Lord is gracious, know the language of a heart under the influence of His Spirit, would, in defiance of Protestant prejudices, be of my mind if they had opportunity of perusing the writings of some Papists.
Newton was not one of the great men of his age, but he is remarkable, if not pre-eminent, for the naturalness with which he speaks the common tongue of the children of God. Father Faber, in the preface to his Hymns, bears a somewhat reluctant witness to this.
Catholics even are said to be sometimes found poring with a devout and unsuspecting delight over the verses of the Olney hymns, which the author (Faber) himself can remember acting like a spell upon him for years, strong enough to be for long a counter influence to very grave convictions, and even now to come back from time to time unbidden into the mind.
If Faber deprecated the ‘spell’ of the Olney hymns, it is fair to remember that Newton concludes his defence of devout Catholics by saying, ‘However, I desire to be thankful that I am not a Papist.’
In 1764 the difficulties which beset his entrance to the ministry ended, and he was ordained by the Bishop of Lincoln to the curacy of Olney, which had been secured for him by the Earl of Dartmouth,[161] a devout and liberal Churchman, commemorated in Cowper’s lines—
We boast some rich ones whom the gospel sways,