Mo, Alice, & Genie; please don't take this as a hostile argument with you. I consider it quite appropriate for Newton, as an anti-slavery campaigner looking back on his own days as a slaver, to have written "a wretch like me". But the second dictionary definition for "wretch" goes, "a person regarded as base, mean, despicable, or vile". Now try to put yourself in the mind of a developing child with severely low self esteem, who believes that he deserves a lot of emotional abuse that he has received. Now imagine how he, feeling despicable and vile, appreciates being saved despite that. Not the healthiest emotional, or spiritual situation.
                            Dean