A Congregational clergyman of Newport, Rhode Island, the founder of what has been called Hopkinsian Divinity, which differed from Calvinism in maintaining the free agency of sinners, the moral inability of the unregenerate, and ascribing the essence of sin to the disposition and purpose of the mind. His views had great influence in the modification of contemporary thought. He was a strong opponent of slavery, and his influence procured the passage of a law prohibiting the importation of slaves into Rhode Island. The “System of Doctrine contained in Divine Revelation” is his principal work. Others are, “The True State of the Unregenerate;” “Nature of True Holiness;” “The Duty and Interest of American States to Emancipate their Slaves.” See “Life” by Park; Mrs. Stowe’s “Minister’s Wooing;” Sprague’s “Annals of the American Pulpit.”
Personal
His appearance was that of a man who had nothing to do with the world. I can well recollect the impression which he made on me when a boy, as he rode on horseback in a plaid gown, fastened by a girdle round his waist, and with a study cap on his head instead of a wig. His delivery in the pulpit was the worst I ever met with. Such tones never came from any human voice within my hearing. He was the very ideal of bad delivery. Then I must say, the matter was as often uninviting as the manner…. His manners had a bluntness, partly natural, partly the result of long seclusion in the country. We cannot wonder that such a man should be set down as hard and severe. But he had a true benevolence, and what is more worthy of being noted, he was given to a facetious style of conversation.
As to his personal appearance, my recollection is, that he was rather above the middle height, somewhat inclined to a plethoric habit, with a thoughtful and intelligent expression of countenance. He wore a black cap, and seemed to me very aged and infirm. I remember to have thought his preaching exceedingly dry and abstract, and such I believe was the estimate formed of it by those whose age and acquirements rendered them more competent judges than I was. I understand that some of his sermons were written out, but he usually preached from short notes. The effect of his preaching was that nearly all the young people of the town went to other churches. I distinctly recollect that there was a larger proportion of aged people in his congregation than I remember ever to have seen in any other; and there was a corresponding gravity and solemnity in their appearance.
Nothing in the history of Samuel Hopkins is more honorable to him, than his early, fearless, uncompromising and indefatigable testimony against the slave trade and against slavery. We commend the consideration of his heroic example, and the study of his works on this subject, to those pastors and doctors, who, within the last three years, in their zeal for compromise and political expediency, have shown themselves recreant to the cause of liberty. That honest old man, with all his metaphysics, had a “throb under the left breast;” and, with all his logic, it was impossible for him to deduce from the Scriptures, or from his own theory of the nature of virtue, any apology for so atrocious a thing as the system of slavery. Without the gift of eloquence, without any advantage of station or office, without wealth, without personal influence, save in a restricted range, he made himself felt, and was willing to be hated, as a defender of the needy and the captive. His influence in this respect has acted upon thousands of minds who were never conscious that the influence which moved them came from so obscure a source. Guided by no impracticable or Jacobinical theory, impelled only by the Divine instinct of equity and love, he demanded, as with an inspired earnestness, justice for the wronged and liberty for all.
He was so infirm, during at least a part of the time after I knew him, that he was unable to walk to the house of God without help. He was rather tall and somewhat corpulent, as well as infirm; and I well remember that a coloured man used to put his shoulder under the Doctor’s arm, and thus walk with him to his pulpit, and then home again after the service. I think I never heard him preach but once, and then his voice and manner, owing I suppose to his bodily infirmities, were extremely feeble; but I think that, in his best state, he had not much animation in the pulpit. I visited him very often, and always found him in his study, and always received from him a cordial welcome. He was pleasant and instructive in conversation, and seemed to be living under a habitual sense of the Divine presence. He was evidently deeply affected that so little apparent success had attained his ministry, and I think he had great fears as to what would be the condition of his society after his removal from them.
He was a good man. His own phrase to express the sum total of virtue was “disinterested benevolence,” and he lived it as faithfully as he preached it. He secured the personal esteem and love of those of his neighbors who differed most widely from him in his theological views. His great mental trait was that which was so clearly marked upon his daily life that he received the nick-name Old Honesty. He was humble, and honest in expressing a depreciatory opinion of his own services. He was honest in his theological convictions, and thorough in carrying them out into their manifold ramifications. So honest was he, that he did not stop always to select language not likely unnecessarily to offend.
General
The celebrity of the author, who, with Edwards and Bellamy, completes the American triumvirate of eminent writers in the same strain of divinity, would have rendered this work [“System of Doctrines”] much more popular and useful, had he kept clear of a bold and grating statement,—that “God has foreordained all the moral evil which does take place,” and which he endeavours to defend with more ingenuity than success.
His system, however fearful, was yet built on a generous foundation. He maintained that all holiness, all moral excellence, consists in benevolence, or disinterested devotion to the greatest good… He taught that sin was introduced into the creation, and is to be everlastingly punished, because evil is necessary to the highest good…. True virtue, as he taught, was an entire surrender of personal interest to the benevolent purposes of God. Self-love he spared in none of its movements.
We have chosen to speak of Dr. Hopkins as a philanthropist, rather than a theologian. Let those who prefer to contemplate the narrow sectarian, rather than the universal man, dwell upon his controversial works, and extol the ingenuity and logical acumen with which he defended his own dogmas, and assailed those of others. We honor him, not as the founder of a new sect, but as the friend of all mankind; the generous defender of the poor and oppressed. Great as unquestionably were his powers of argument, his learning, and skill in the use of the weapons of theologic warfare, these by no means constitute his highest title to respect and reverence. As the product of an honest and earnest mind, his doctrinal dissertations have at least the merit of sincerity. They were put forth in behalf of what he regarded as truth; and the success which they met with, while it called into exercise his profoundest gratitude, only served to deepen the humility and self-abasement of their author.
Hopkins sought to add to the five points of Calvinism the rather heterogeneous ingredient that holiness consists in pure, disinterested benevolence, and that all regard for self is necessarily sinful.
Few theologians of our country have exerted a wider special influence than Samuel Hopkins, a descendant of Governor Hopkins, of Connecticut, and the chief of the Calvinistic sect of Christians known as Hopkinsians…. Dr. Hopkins was an inefficient preacher. His pen, and not his tongue, was the chief utterer of those sentiments which have made his name famous as a Calvinistic theologian.
Hopkinsianism is Calvinism, in distinction from every form and shade of Arminianism; and yet not Calvinism, in precisely the sense of Calvin, or of the Westminster Confession of faith. It is a modification of some of the points of old Calvinism, presenting them, as its abettors think, in a more reasonable, consistent, and scriptural point of light. These modifications originated in New England, more than a hundred years ago. They commenced with the first President Edwards, and were still further unfolded in the teachings of his pupils and followers, Hopkins, Bellamy, West, the younger Edwards, Dr. Emmons, and Dr. Spring. The name “Hopkinsian” is derived from Dr. Samuel Hopkins of Newport, R. I., and was fastened upon those who sympathized with him, not by himself, but by an opponent.
The progress of theology during the thirty years which followed the Revolution is illustrated by the works of many men of mark in their profession, and by two men of original though somewhat crotchety religious genius, Samuel Hopkins and Nathaniel Emmons.
He expected men to study his books till they got the great sweep and purpose of the whole, and interpret single expressions by his general meaning. If one will read him thus, and do him the justice now and then to re-state his thought in modern styles of expression, the grandeur of his fearless consistency will impress, as much as the deep solicitude and heart-searching faithfulness of this preacher-theologian will move and profit in the reading.
No one can read Hopkins’s writings without perceiving how saturated he has become with Edwards’s thought. Whether he is the truest interpreter of Edwards may be doubted, however, for his mind was cast in a different mould. Nor does it appear that Edwards admitted him, after all, to complete intellectual intimacy; for Hopkins is silent as the grave about Edwards’s more recondite philosophical or theological speculations…. Dr. Hopkins passed his life shut up to his own reflections, within the narrow precincts of his theological system. He had learned to think vigorously for himself, but he had a strange incapacity for seeing how other people thought. He showed no concern at the great revulsion of feeling which was all around him in his later years. He had no anticipation of a truth to be revealed to the coming generation which would shake the principles to whose advocacy he had devoted his life.
