Advent Homilies: John Newton

Acknowledgements

Foreword

To the Reader

Chapter 1: The Consolation

Chapter 2: The Harbinger

Chapter 3: The Shaking of the Heavens and the Earth

Chapter 4: The Lord Coming to His Temple

Chapter 5: Immanuel

Chapter 6: Salvation Published from the Mountains

Chapter 7: The Morning Light

Chapter 8: The Sun Rising upon a Dark World

Chapter 9: Characters and Name of Messiah

Chapter 10: The Angel’s Message and Song

Chapter 11: Effects of Messiah’s Appearance

FROM THE INTRODUCTION

“For some readers (we hope many), this may be the first Davenant Press volume you have ever held in your hands, for which we are very grateful! Others, however, may be more familiar with Davenant’s work over the years, and perhaps slightly puzzled that we would republish sermons by John Newton (1725-1807). And a curious selection too, being from Newton’s sermon on the Messiah of Georg Friedrich Handel (1685-1759). For over a decade now, Davenant’s mission has been to “retrieve the riches of classical Protestantism.” In practice, this has often meant a focus on aspects of the Reformation tradition that are unknown to contemporary evangelicals, with a particular focus on neglected magisterial Reformers—that is, those whose reforming work was still closely tied to the magistrate, or the civil authorities. This in contrast to the so-called ‘radical Reformers’ who gave birth to the Anabaptist tradition. Most notably, Davenant’s work in this area has included sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century figures such as Richard Hooker and John Davenant, as well as other Anglicans like John Jewel, George Carleton, Joseph Hall, and most recently, John Ponet. Their tradition has been hugely overshadowed in the modern evangelical imagination, and even more broadly, by the later tradition of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Puritans. This is in no small part down to J.I. Packer’s influential retrieval of the Puritans among evangelicals, something for which the Davenant Army of Friends is ultimately grateful, at the very least because it set the ball rolling for an evangelical openness to church history in general which made our work possible. 

            Now, ‘magisterial Reformer’ and ‘Puritan’ are not quite mutually exclusive, depending on what one means by them. But often they are, and Newton is typically considered among the latter. What’s more, he is certainly a church historical figure whose profile does not need much boosting. If you asked most contemporary English-speaking evangelicals to name a church historical figure from before 1900, a good number would say “John Newton.” Why, then, would the Davenant Press republish the sermons of a Puritan preacher already popular with evangelicals?” – Editor’s Introduction