Background
Samuel Finley was a Scotch- Irish immigrant who arrived in Philadelphia, September 28, 1734. Like Gilbert Tennent whose friend and fellow worker he became, he was born in the County of Armagh, Ireland.
Presbyterian clergyman president of the College of New Jersey
Samuel Finley was a Scotch- Irish immigrant who arrived in Philadelphia, September 28, 1734. Like Gilbert Tennent whose friend and fellow worker he became, he was born in the County of Armagh, Ireland.
When he arrived in Pennsylvania he had received a good education and was bent upon becoming a minister. He put himself under the care of the New Brunswick, New Jersey, Presbytery, and was probably a student for some years in William Tennent’s Log College.
He seems to have carried on extensive correspondence with clergymen abroad and in 1763 received the degree of D. D. from the University of Glasgow, on recommendation, it is said, of Dr. Samuel Chandler.
On August 5, 1740, he was licensed to preach, and on October 13, 1742, he was ordained. At the time of his licensure the Great Awakening was under way and Finley followed Whitefield and Gilbert Tennent into New Jersey and carried on a notable evangelistic work in Deerfield, Greenwich, and Cape May. Later he preached for some months in Philadelphia. During this period he exhibited the acrimonious controversial spirit which accompanied the Awakening and joined in the arraignment of the “unconverted ministry. ” As early as January 20, 1740/41, he delivered in Nottingham, Pennsylvania, a discourse of much severity, which was reprinted in Boston and Edinburgh, 'the latter edition with an indorsement by Whitefield, beginning: “The following sermon was written by a worthy friend of mine abroad. ”
In 1743 in Cape May he had a public disputation of two days’ duration with Rev. Abel Morgan on the subject of baptism, and in 1746 he published A Charitable Plea for the Speechless; or, The Right of Believers’ Infants to Baptism Vindicated. Morgan put forth a rejoinder, and in 1748 Finley replied with A Vindication of the Charitable Plea for the Speechless. In 1743 also he published Satan Stripp’d of His Angelic Robe the Substance of Several Sermons Preach’d . . January 1742-3, Shewing the Strength, Nature, and Symptoms of Delusion, with an Application to the Moravians; and Clear Light Put Out in Obscure Darkness: Being an Examination and Refutation of Mr. Thompson s Sermon, Entitled The Doctrine of Convictions Set in a Clear Light. In August of this same contentious year, having received a call to Milford, Connecticut, he was sent thither by his presbytery with permission “to preach for other places thereabouts, when Providence may open a door for him. ”
Invited to preach to the Second Society, New Haven, a “Separatist” congregation without legal standing, he was arrested while on his way to the meeting, and later expelled from the colony as a vagrant.
In June 1744 he became pastor of the church in Nottingham, Pennsylvania, often referred to as in Maryland since it was on the boundary line.
Here he remained seventeen years, his reputation for ability and scholarship steadily increasing. In connection with his pastoral work, he conducted a school which became widely known, in which were trained such men as Benjamin and Jacob Rush, Ebenezer Hazard, and Colonel John Bayard.
A tradition that his scholars were systematically birched every Monday morning on general principles of discipline is probably unreliable, for whatever the spirit displayed in his controversial utterances, he was esteemed for his kindness and courtesy. Pupils of his describe him as “a man of small stature and of a round and ruddy countenance”: remarkable “for sweetness of temper and politeness of behaviour. ” On May 31, 1761, he was unanimously elected president of the College of New Jersey, having already been an active trustee for ten years. His administration was a successful one, but was cut short by his early death. Among his published sermons not already mentioned are The Approved Ministers of God, ordination sermon of John Rodgers, Mar. 16, 1749; The Curse of Meros, or, The Danger of Neutrality in the Cause of God, and Our Country (1757), preached during the French and Indian War, arraigning pacificism, and displaying the Scotch-Irish attitude in Pennsylvania as contrasted with the Quakers’; Faith- fid Ministers, the Fathers of the Church (1752), on the death of Rev. John Blair; The Madness of Mankind (1754) ; The Power of Gospel Ministers (1755); The Disinterested and Devout Christian, on the death of President Davies, preached May 28, 1761; and The Successfid Minister of Christ, Distinguished in Glory, on the death of Gilbert Tenncnt, preached September 2, 1764.
His death occurred in Philadelphia where he had gone for treatment, and he was buried in the Second Presbyterian Church there by the side of Gilbert Tennent, both bodies being later removed to the cemetery of that church.
He was twice married; first to Sarah Hall, and in 1761 to Anne, daughter of Matthew Clarkson of New York.