Ambrosiaster : In this life we are children, compared with what we shall become in the next life. For everything in this life is imperfect, including knowledge. — COMMENTARY ON PAUL'S EPISTLES Basil of Caesarea : "When I was a child"—that is, fresh from committing to memory the first elements of the divine Word—"I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But now that I have become a man"—that is, and am hastening to attain the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ—"I have put away the things of a child." — CONCERNING FAITH Clement of Alexandria : And the expression, "When I was a child, I thought as a child, I spoke as a child," points out his mode of life according to the law, according to which, thinking childish things, he persecuted, and speaking childish things he blasphemed the Word, not as having yet attained to the simplicity of childhood, but as being in its folly. "When I became a man," again Paul says, "I put away childish things." It is not incomplete size of stature, nor a definite measure of time, nor additional secret teachings in things that are manly and more perfect, that the apostle, who himself professes to be a preacher of childishness, alludes to when he sends it, as it were, into banishment; but he applies the name "children" to those who are under the law, who are terrified by fear as children are by bugbears; and "men" to us who are obedient to the Word and masters of ourselves, who have believed, and are saved by voluntary choice, and are rationally, not irrationally, frightened by terror. — The Instructor Book 1 Clement of Alexandria : And the expression, "When I was a child, I thought as a child, I spoke as a child," points out his mode of life according to the law, according to which, thinking childish things, he persecuted, and speaking childish things he blasphemed the Word, not as having yet attained to the simplicity of childhood, but as being in its folly. — The Instructor Book 1 Clement of Alexandria : "When I became a man," again Paul says, "I put away childish things." It is not incomplete size of stature, nor a definite measure of time, nor additional secret teachings in things that are manly and more perfect, that the apostle, who himself professes to be a preacher of childishness, alludes to when he sends it, as it were, into banishment; but he applies the name "children" to those who are under the law, who are terrified by fear as children are by bugbears; and "men" to us who are obedient to the Word and masters of ourselves, who have believed, and are saved by voluntary choice, and are rationally, not irrationally, frightened by terror. — The Instructor Book 1 John Chrysostom : "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child; but now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things." Next he points out also how great is the distance between the two, and that our deficiency is no small one. — Homily on 1 Corinthians 34 Tertullian : "When I was a child," he says, "as a child I spake, as a child I understood; but when I became a man, those (things) which had been the child's I abandoned: " so truly did he turn away from his early opinions: nor did he sin by becoming an emulator not of ancestral but of Christian traditions, wishing even the precision of them who advised the retention of circumcision. — On Modesty