God speaks to men as to his children--"gentle as a father," as Homer says. He offers freedom, and you run away to slavery; he gives salvation, and you slip away into death. Yet he does not cease to plead--"Wake, and Christ the Lord shall lighten upon you, the sun of resurrection."[89] "What would you have covenanted to give, oh! men! if eternal salvation had been for sale? Not though one should measure out all Pactolus, the mythic river of gold, will he pay a price equal to salvation."[90] Yet "you can buy this precious salvation with your own treasure, with love and faith of life ... that is a price God is glad to accept."[91] Men grow to the world, like seaweed to the rocks by the sea, and despise immortality "like the old Ithacan, yearning not for Truth and the fatherland {286} in heaven, and the light that truly is, but for the smoke."[92] It is piety that "makes us like God"--a reference to Plato's familiar phrase. God's function (_ergon_) is man's salvation. "The word is not hidden from any. Light is common and shines upon all men; there is no Cimmerian in the reckoning. Let us hasten to salvation, to re-birth. Into one love to be gathered, many in number, according to the unity of the essence of the Monad, let us hasten. As we are blessed, let us pursue unity, seeking the good Monad. And this union of many, from a medley of voices and distraction, receives a divine harmony and becomes one symphony, following one coryphaeus (_choreutes_) and teacher, the Word, resting upon the Truth itself, and saying 'Abba Father.'"[93] Here indeed Philosophy and the Gospel join hands, when the Monad and Abba Father are shown to be one and the same.[94]