Fatherhood Quote by John Pearson

Pearson reaches for the oldest rhetorical lever in the Western religious imagination: abundance promised from above and below, sealed by paternal authority and divine muscle. The line rolls forward on “by... and by...,” a courtroom-style oath that stacks witnesses until doubt feels almost impious. It’s not just devotional; it’s contractual. God is named through kinship (“thy Father”) and sovereignty (“the Almighty”), merging intimacy with domination so the blessing lands as both comfort and command.

The real power is in the inventory. “Heaven above” and “the deep that lieth under” map the cosmos into a total supply chain, as if creation were a warehouse of favor. Then Pearson tightens the focus to the body: “breasts” and “womb.” That move is doing cultural work. Fertility and nourishment aren’t incidental perks but proof of divine endorsement, the kind that stabilizes families, inheritance, and social order. In a 17th-century Protestant world anxious about providence, plague, and political upheaval, bodily flourishing functions as theology made visible.

Pearson is also ventriloquizing Scripture (the cadence and catalog echo Jacob’s blessings in Genesis), which matters for a theologian writing in an era when authority is won by sounding biblical, not merely citing it. The subtext is reassurance with teeth: if help and blessing come from God’s paternal hand, then dependence is the proper posture, and gratitude is inseparable from obedience. Even the lushness of the phrasing performs the point: grace isn’t meager. It overflows, insistently, until it becomes a worldview.