He says, “Upon whom shall I look, but upon him who is gentle and quiet?”[196] For such is the virgin speech, tender, and free of fraud; whence also a virgin is wont to be called “a tender bride,” and a child “tender-hearted.” And we are tender who are pliant to the power of persuasion, and are easily drawn to goodness, and are mild, and free of the stain of malice and perverseness, for the ancient race was perverse and hard-hearted; but the band of infants, the new people which we are, is delicate as a child. On account of the hearts of the innocent, the apostle, in the Epistle to the Romans, owns that he rejoices, and furnishes a kind of definition of children, so to speak, when he says, “I would have you wise toward good, but simple towards evil.”[197] For the name of child, νήπιος, is not understood by us privatively, though the sons of the grammarians make the νη a privative particle. For if they call us who follow after childhood foolish, see how they utter blasphemy against the Lord, in regarding those as foolish who have betaken themselves to God. But if, which is rather the true sense, they themselves understand the designation children of simple ones, we glory in the name. For the new minds, which have newly become wise, which have sprung into being according to the new covenant, are infantile in the old folly. Of late, then, God was known by the coming of Christ: “For no man knoweth God but the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal Him.”[198] In contradistinction, therefore, to the older people, the new people are called young, having learned the new blessings; and we have the exuberance of life’s morning prime in this youth which knows no old age, in which we are always growing to maturity in intelligence, are always young, always mild, always new: for those must necessarily be new, who have become partakers of the new Word. And that which participates in eternity is wont to be assimilated to the incorruptible: so that to us appertains the designation of the age of childhood, a lifelong spring-time, because the truth that is in us, and our habits saturated with the truth, cannot be touched by old age; but Wisdom is ever blooming, ever remains consistent and the same, and never changes. “Their children,” it is said, “shall be borne upon their shoulders, and fondled on their knees; as one whom his mother comforteth, so also shall I comfort you.”[199] The mother draws the children to herself; and we seek our mother the church. Whatever is feeble and tender, as needing help on account of its feebleness, is kindly looked on, and is sweet and pleasant, anger changing into help in the case of such: for thus horses’ colts, and the little calves of cows, and the lion’s whelp, and the stag’s fawn, and the child of man, are looked upon with pleasure by their fathers and mothers. Thus also the Father of the universe cherishes affection towards those who have fled to Him; and having begotten them again by His Spirit to the