AN ESSAY e ON THE HARMONIOUS RELATIONS BETWEEN Divine Faith TO WHICH ARE ADDED TWO CHAPTERS ON THE DIVINE OFFICE OF THE CHURCH. BY A. C. BAINE, Esq. WITH THE APPROBATION OF THE MOST REVEREND, THE ARCHBISHOP OF BALTIMORE. BALTIMORE: PUBLISHED BY JOHN MURPHY & Co. SAN FRANCISCO... M. FLOOD. LONDON... CATHOLIC PUBLISHING COMPANY. SOLD BY ALL CATHOLIC BOOKSELLERS. B3 1861 ENTERED, according to the act of Congress, in the year eighteen hundred and sixty, by JOHN MURPHY, in the Clerk's Office of the Distric Court of Maryland. GIFT OF LIBRARY San Francisco, May 12, 1860. Dear Gentlemen: In transmitting to you the Essay of Judge A. C. Baine, for publication, I feel pleasure in stating that I consider the work very useful to the public. It is the offering of a convert— a respectable American citizen, and a distinguished member of the Bar—who feels for the spiritual interest of his fellow citizens, and who, having obtained the treasure of the true faith, sincerely desires that others may be equally blessed. Thus he devotes his logical mind to prove that the Catholic Church is, as she was, the Teacher, vested with God's commission, to impart Christian revelation. This is done in a style rather new, yet forcible—familiar, yet conclusive. The judge makes out the case of the Church, as in a Court of Justice, and he cannot fail obtaining from all impartial readers a favorable verdict. Respectfully yours, JOSEPH S. ALEMANY, Archbishop of San Francisco. Messrs. John Murphy & Co. Baltimore. PREFACE. THE object of this little volume is to show the Harmonious Relations between Divine Faith and Natural Reason: and thus establish that the Church, in teaching the divine revelation committed to the Apostles, usurps no province, restrains no legitimate operation, and violates no real sanction of either reason, common sense, or experience. As a sequence to this, it is the further design, or hope rather, of this work, to present the case in such a point of view, as to induce every candid and just-minded man to ascertain the faith which the Church teaches her children, from her own standards of faith, and not to take her teaching upon the declamatory traditions and historical assertions of her accusers. To this much of simple justice she, and all her children, think she is entitled from all men of whatever persuasion. It is a principle of universal jurisprudence that no man, not even the most lowly culprit, shall be condemned unheard, no matter how fierce his accusers may be, and no matter how terrible the crimes they may lay. to his charge. The judge who would condemn any man upon mere clamor, without any investigation into the actual conduct of the person accused, would be considered both cruel and unjust. And the Church feels most profoundly, and earnestly insists, that whoever denounces her teaching without learning from her own standards of faith exactly what she does teach as divine |