Daily Inspiration Quote by Samuel Hopkins

Hopkins writes like a man trying to make moral urgency sound like common sense. The sentence has the blunt architecture of a sermon, but the real work is political: he frames slavery not merely as cruelty but as a civic and spiritual suicide pact. The opening move - “ourselves being judges” - quietly recruits the reader into complicity. No distant tribunal is needed; any honest member of the community already knows the verdict. That rhetorical trap is deliberate: if you recognize the slaves’ “wretched situation,” you also inherit responsibility for it.

The second half pivots from the enslaved to the enslavers, and that shift is the key to Hopkins’s intent. He offers a carrot-and-stick theology calibrated for an eighteenth-century audience that feared social collapse as much as damnation. “Escape ruin” translates moral reform into self-preservation, suggesting slavery endangers not only souls but the stability of the whole social order. Then comes the classic Puritan bargain: align the community with righteousness and you “obtain the smiles and protection of Heaven.” The phrase is almost transactional, turning divine favor into a kind of public insurance policy.

Context matters: Hopkins was a New England theologian in the era when abolitionist arguments had to pass through religious gatekeepers and communal anxieties. His subtext is strategic: even if you’re unmoved by Black suffering, you should still act - because slavery is a curse that rebounds on the people who tolerate it.