Father of [man] men, Thy care we bless. P. Doddridge. [Family Worship.] Appeared in J. Orton's posthumous edition of Doddridge's Hymns, &c, 1755, No. 2, in 4 stanzas of 4 lines, and headed, "God's gracious approbation of a religious care of our families." In J. D. Humphreys's edition of the Hymns, printed from the original manuscript in 1839, a considerable difference is found in the hymns, showing that Orton took more than usual liberties with Doddridge's text. The first stanza reads:—
"Father of men, Thy care we trace,
That crowns with love our infant race;
From Thee they sprung, and by Thy power
Are still sustain'd through every hour."
The text followed by the compilers of hymn-books from Ash & Evans in their Bristol Baptist Collection, 1769, to the New Congregational Hymn Book, 1859-69, was that of Orton, 1755: often altered as in Ash & Evans's Collection to "Father of all, Thy care we bless." This latter is the more popular reading of the two. The Methodist New Connexion Hymns, &c, 1835-60, has it as "Father of man, Thy care we bless."
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
Philip Doddridge (b. London, England, 1702; d. Lisbon, Portugal, 1751) belonged to the Non-conformist Church (not associated with the Church of England). Its members were frequently the focus of discrimination. Offered an education by a rich patron to prepare him for ordination in the Church of England, Doddridge chose instead to remain in the Non-conformist Church. For twenty years he pastored a poor parish in Northampton, where he opened an academy for training Non-conformist ministers and taught most of the subjects himself. Doddridge suffered from tuberculosis, and when Lady Huntington, one of his patrons, offered to finance a trip to Lisbon for his health, he is reputed to have said, "I can as well go to heaven from Lisbon as from Nort… Go to person page >
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