Religion, then, must have its type in God; in his infinite essence must be found those eternal laws which render temporal religion possible.
What is there in the essence of the infinite which constitutes religion, and establishes its laws?
The eternal religion is the life of God, its laws the laws of the genesis of his life.
God is a living, personal being. He is unborn, unbegotten, intelligent activity; first termination of the Godhead. By one eternal, immanent glance of his intelligence he searches, so to speak, and scrutinizes the innermost depths of his essence, and thus comprehends himself, that is, conceives and utters himself interiorly.
This infinite, most perfect utterance and intelligible expression of himself is a second termination of the Godhead; the Word, who portrays and manifests the Godhead intelligibly; as the first person is the actuation of the Godhead under the termination of intelligent, primary, independent activity and principle.
This duality of terminations is brought into harmony by a third person, the result of the action of both. For between the intelligent principle, uttering himself intelligibly, and the utterance, the term of that intellectual conception, there passes necessarily an infinite attraction, a blissful sympathy, an unutterable complacency.
The Father beholds as in a bright, clear stream of infinite light the unspeakable beauty and loveliness of his infinite perfections, and utters them to himself, and delights in that utterance. The Son beholds himself as the most perfect, the consubstantial representation of the sublime excellence of the Father, and takes complacency in him as the principle of his personality.
This common complacency, sympathy, attraction, love, bliss, is the third termination of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit, the breath of the love of both, the personal subsisting attraction of the Father and of the Son, the person who closes the cycle of God's infinite life.
This is the eternal, immanent, objective religion. For what is religion in its highest metaphysical acceptation? It is the intelligible and loving acknowledgment of the infinite nature and attributes of God. Now, the Word is the infinite, substantial, and intelligible acknowledgment of the Father; the Holy Ghost is the infinite, substantial, loving acknowledgment of both. Therefore, the eternal mystery of the life of the infinite, the Trinity, is also the eternal objective religion by which God acknowledges, appreciates and honors himself.
It might be objected to the soundness of this doctrine, that one of the relations, which is the principal and fundamental in religion, the relation of dependence, is wanting in the life of the infinite, and that consequently that life cannot be taken as the eternal type of religion.