Samuel Hopkins

1721-1803. Congregationalist theologian of the New England Theology* or “Hopkinsianism.” Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, he received his A.B. from Yale in 1741, and two years later was ordained as pastor of Great Barrington, Massachusetts. In 1770 he became pastor of the Congregational church in Newport, Rhode Island. He was an early exponent of the abolitionist cause, seeing slavery as a moral evil. He is even better known for his modification of Calvinism. To him sin was essentially self-love but without legal imputation of Adam's sin to us. Man was responsible to seek a change of heart which would lead to “disinterested benevolence” in the life of the regenerate.