Fatherhood Quote by John Pearson

Pearson builds a small moral trap here: if even the "best of men" will take love from the "meanest persons", how much more overwhelming must a father's love be. It is a piece of theological persuasion disguised as social observation, and it works because it flatters the reader into agreement before springing the real claim. Who wants to be so proud as to reject love when even the virtuous accept it? By the time the sentence turns to fatherhood, resistance feels like bad manners.

The subtext is both consoling and disciplinary. Love, Pearson implies, is not a reward reserved for the worthy; it's a gift with a kind of moral sovereignty, crossing rank and reputation. That plays neatly in a 17th-century England obsessed with hierarchy: he momentarily suspends the usual social sorting to argue that affection outruns status. Yet the hierarchy comes back through the side door in the final exclamation. "Father" is not just a family role; in a theologian's mouth it's a bridge to God the Father. The human analogy primes the divine one, making obedience and trust feel less like submission and more like recognition.

The rhetorical engine is contrast and escalation: best/meanest, esteemed/accepted, then the jump to a superlative bond. Pearson isn't just praising dads; he's constructing a ladder of credibility for Christian doctrine. If love can be offered without shame and received without loss of dignity, then the believer is invited to approach paternal (and divine) affection without self-disqualification, and to feel that refusal would be the truly "mean" act.