Joseph Bellamy

Joseph Bellamy (1719-90) was, like Samuel Hopkins, a part of the ‘New Light’ theology in New England that emerged from the philosophical writings of Jonathan Edwards. They sought to form a new, more moderate (although to some traditionalists, a heterodox) form of Calvinism, one that nevertheless relied heavily on man’s own innate capacities (largely rational) to accept the moral perfection of God as the supreme choice in life. Both Hopkins and Bellamy were well-respected by Andrew Fuller, John Ryland, Jr., and other British Particular Baptists who adopted a more moderate, evangelical Calvinism in place of the High Calvinism that had reigned for much of the eighteenth century.