Hopkins, Samuel

Hopkins, Samuel, 1721–1803, American clergyman and theologian, b. Waterbury, Conn., grad. Yale, 1741. He was a leading disciple of Jonathan Edwards, whose theology was the foundation for his own system, later known as Hopkinsianism. For 60 years Hopkins held pastorates at Great Barrington, Mass., and at Newport, R.I. His preaching, noninspirational and severely logical, was less influential than his writings, notably his System of Doctrines (1793). His views remained potent in American religious life until after the Civil War. Hopkins was one of the first New England ministers to denounce slavery and the slave trade.

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Hopkins, Samuel (1721–1803) Protestant clergyman, theologian; born in Waterbury, Conn. He graduated from Yale in 1741 and studied theology privately with Jonathan Edwards before becoming pastor of the Congregational church in Great Barrington, Mass., in 1745. His modifications of Edward's orthodoxy, known as Hopkinsianism, were influential. Parishioners, tiring of his stern sermons, dismissed him in 1769; he accepted a pulpit in Newport, R.I., and remained there for the rest of his life. An early opponent of slavery, he worked to establish religious missions in Africa.