By the same law also, it must be identical and one with the infinite; because love, being originated by an immanent act, terminates inside of the infinite, and is, therefore, identical with the infinite. The love as object, therefore, is coeternal and identical with the infinite; it is the infinite.
It is distinct from love as subject and from the Word, by the law of opposition of origin, which implies that a term which originates from a principle is necessarily opposed to it, and consequently distinct. Now, love, as object in the infinite, originates from the intelligent activity and from the Word. The intelligent activity, by apprehending himself, as infinite goodness and excellence, through his Word, loves himself. Hence, this love proceeds from both—the intelligent activity, who conceives his infinite goodness—the Word, who represents it, and makes it intelligible. This love-object is a third person. For, from what we have said, it appears that love-object is identical with the infinite, with the divine essence, and consequently partakes of all the infinite attributes of the essence; hence he is a spiritual and intelligent being; as distinct from both the intelligent activity and the Word, he is possessed of a termination exclusively his own, which makes him the owner of himself incommunicable and solidary of his notional action. Hence he is a person.
This third person, not being originated according to a likeness of nature, cannot, like the second person, be called son. He is the personal and subsisting love of the Father and of the Son; and as the object loved exists in the subject loving, as inclining, and in a certain manner as impelling, the subject toward it, as raising in the subject an attraction or aspiration toward it, hence the third person is called the living and subsisting Spirit of God.
The better to conceive this distinctive termination of the third term in the infinite, let us suppose an attraction between two persons. It is needless to remark that we use this term for want of a better and more spiritual one. Suppose, therefore, an attraction between two persons; do not make it an accident or modification, but substantial; carry it to its utmost perfection, actualize it ad infinitum; so that it may be able to return upon itself, to have consciousness of itself, to possess and own itself, and in this sense to feel itself distinct from and independent of all others—and you will have, as product, a subsisting or personal attraction, a third person.
Such is the idea we can form of the Holy Spirit. The Father beholds himself totally in the Son as an offspring of himself, and loves himself in his offspring, his perfect and substantial expression.
The Son beholds himself totally in the Father as his author, and loves the Father as his principle and origin. This common love, this mutual attraction, this aspiration of the Father toward the Son, and of the Son toward, the Father, being infinite, is most actual, perfect, and complete—a living, subsisting attraction, with consciousness and the ownership of himself, a subsistence personifying their mutual love and binding both in one eternal tie of affection.
Hence, by this distinctive constituent of common love, the Spirit is the archetype of harmony and order; since in his personality he brings the opposition existing between the conceiver and the conceived into harmony and unity of love.
He is also the archetype of the beautiful, being the very beauty and loveliness of God.
Beauty, in its highest metaphysical expression, is variety reduced to unity, by order and proportion. Now, the Spirit harmonizes the reality and the intelligibility of God into a unity of love. Hence he is the beauty of the Father and the Son—their personal and eternal loveliness; and as such, the archetype of the beautiful in all orders.