Daily Inspiration Quote by Samuel Hopkins

A challenge disguised as an invitation: Hopkins sets a trap for slavery’s theological defenders by granting them the one terrain they claim to own. He’s not asking for opinions or “tradition.” He’s demanding chapter-and-verse proof, forcing pro-slavery Christians to either produce a clean biblical warrant or admit their position rests on power, profit, and habit rather than revelation.

The “however” matters. It signals that Hopkins has already heard the usual evasions, the pious throat-clearing that turns exploitation into social order. His willingness to “hear” reads less like open-mindedness and more like courtroom procedure: present your evidence. The phrasing “what you can produce” treats Scripture like admissible material, not a misty source of general moral vibes. That’s a pointed move in an 18th-century Anglo-American Protestant culture where biblical authority was the currency of legitimacy.

Then comes the surgical phrase “any kind of slavery.” Hopkins anticipates the rhetorical escape hatches: not chattel slavery, but “biblical servitude”; not racial slavery, but “indenture”; not cruelty, but “benevolent mastery.” By widening the net, he blocks rebranding. If Scripture truly sanctions human ownership in principle, let the argument stand in the open.

Context sharpens the edge. Hopkins was a New England Congregationalist tied to the “New Divinity” wing of Jonathan Edwards’s legacy, a tradition that prized moral rigor and insisted faith must show up in public ethics. His line is abolitionism as theological cross-examination: a refusal to let Christianity be laundered into an alibi for an economy. The subtext is simple and searing: if you need the Bible to defend slavery, you’ve already confessed it can’t survive daylight.