The Instructor 1.5.19

Here it is right to consider the name “infant” (nēpios): the infant is not classed among the foolish. The foolish one is nēpytios; but nēpios is ne-ēpios (“newly gentle”), as ēpios is the tender-minded, as if one had newly become gentle and mild in character. The blessed Paul pointed to this most clearly when he said: “Though we could have been a burden as apostles of Christ, we became gentle among you, as a nurse cherishes her own children.” The infant, then, is gentle, and in this way more tender, delicate, simple, guileless, and without hypocrisy, straightforward and upright in mind; and this is the foundation of simplicity and truth. “For on whom shall I look,” it says, “but on the gentle and quiet?” Such is the virgin speech, tender and unaffected; so it is customary to call a maiden a tender bride and a boy tender-minded. And we are tender, soft toward persuasion and easily shaped toward goodness, without gall and unmixed with malice and crookedness. For the old generation is crooked and hard-hearted; but the chorus of infants, we the new people, is delicate as a child.