1A certain man was scolding his son for buying horses and dogs rather too extravagantly. 1When the young man had gone, I said to him: 'Come now, have you never done anything for which your father could have rebuked you? 1You have, I say. 1Do you not sometimes do things which your son, if suddenly he were the father and you the son, would reprove with equal severity? 1Are not all men led astray by some error? 1Does not this man indulge himself in that, another in this?' 2Warned by this example of excessive severity, I have written this to you out of our mutual love, so that you too may never treat your son too harshly and severely.
2Bear in mind both that he is a boy and that you were one, and use the fact that you are a father in such a way as to remember that you are a man and the father of a man. 2Farewell.