As ye know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you, as a father doth his children,
Ver. 11. As a father] Before, as a mother, 1 Thessalonians 2:7, a nurse not mercenary, but natural, with greatest tenderness and indulgence. Here he tempers his mother-like meekness with the gravity and authority of a father. Ministers must turn themselves, as it were, into all shapes and fashions, both of speech and spirit, to win people to God.