Now, this personality is infinite; infinite, therefore, is the ontological worth of the human actions of Christ.
And if we consider, as we have already remarked, that human nature is a recapitulation of all the elements of the cosmos, since it shares spirit, intelligence, and will with the angelic nature, sensible apprehension with animal nature, life with the vegetable nature, and locomotion with inorganic nature, it follows that all the actions of the cosmos are recapitulated in human nature, and that consequently they are exalted to an infinite worth and dignity in the human nature of Christ, which is completed by his infinite personality.
The consequences of the third class will better explain and develop this exaltation of the life of the cosmos. The object of the external action consists in manifesting the infinite excellence and perfections of God. This creation does in two different ways: 1st, ontologically, the very nature of the cosmos being an expression, a likeness of the infinite. This function is discharged indistinctly both by intelligent and unintelligent beings.
2d. But this function, by which unintelligent creatures unconsciously manifest in their nature and properties the excellence of God, in intelligent creatures is necessarily a moral act, and gives rise to the virtue of religion; because intelligent creatures cannot possibly fail to perceive the relation which binds them to their creator, and to feel the duty of acknowledging it.
Hence, religion is an absolute duty for intelligent beings; so necessary and absolute that the opposite assertion would be a contradiction in terms.
To say a creature, is to affirm a being created by God with the express purpose of manifesting his perfections; to say intelligent, is to affirm a creature able to perceive this relation, and able to fulfil the purpose which it perceives was intended by the creator. To absolve, therefore, intelligent creatures from the duty of religion, is to affirm and deny in the same breath that they are intelligent creatures.
Hence, they must necessarily perceive and will the relation in which they stand to their creator, and consequently be religious by force of their very nature and existence.
The whole cosmos must pay to God, its creator, the homage of religion; unintelligent creatures by unconsciously portraying his perfections; intelligent creatures, by acknowledging the same with their intelligence and will.
Now, this first function of the cosmos, this primary act of its life, is elevated to the highest possible perfection through the hypostatic moment. For through this moment the external religion of the cosmos is elevated to the dignity and grandeur of the internal religion.
Philosophers and theologians do not treat of the existence of the eternal and objective religion, as often as they do of that religion which expresses the relations between the creator and his creatures, and might be styled external and temporal religion. But every thing temporal is the counterpart of something eternal; every subjective existence has an intelligible objective existence in eternity, a type without which its subjective existence were inconceivable.