(1) I thank God, whom I serve from [my] (b) forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day;
(1) The purpose that he aims at in this epistle is to confirm Timothy to continue constantly and bravely even to the end. And he sets first before him the great good will he has for him, and then reckons up the excellent gifts which God would as it were have to be in Timothy by inheritance, and his ancestors, which might so much the more make him bound to God.
(b) From Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: for he speaks not of Pharisaism, but of Christianity.