He founded the West Nottingham Academy and was the fifth president and an original trustee of the College of New Jersey (later renamed as Princeton University) from 1761 until 1766.

It is likely that Samuel Finley was a graduate of William Tennent's Log College, in Neshaminy, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, known for its training of evangelical Presbyterian ministers who played a role in the 18th century religious revival known as The Great Awakening.

[1] In 1743 Finley was assigned by the New Brunswick Presbytery to the newly formed (January 1742) Presbyterian congregation at Milford, Connecticut.

Charles Augustus Hanna, author of The Scotch-Irish, concludes that this "harsh treatment", so "contrary to the British Constitution", sowed seeds of revolution by acting as a "forfeiture under the Colonial Charter".

Samuel Kirkland (1765), founder and first president of Hamilton College; David Ramsay (1765), physician and historian of the American Revolution; and Oliver Ellsworth (1766), the third Chief Justice of the United States.

Finley's sermons, Hazard said, "were calculated to inform the ignorant, to alarm the careless and secure, and to edify and comfort the faithful".

[citation needed] Another signer of the Declaration of Independence, Richard Stockton, studied under Finley at West Nottingham Academy.

Though Finley's body was originally buried at the 2nd Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, when the building at Arch and Cherry Sts.