According to the Catholic doctrine, _faith_ is the beginning of human salvation, the ground and root of justification, [Footnote 15] _i.e._, of the supernatural life of the soul. St. Paul designates faith "the substance of things hoped for." [Footnote 16] That is to say, the beatific vision of God, and with it the point toward which the whole supernatural order tends and in which it rests, has its foundation laid in faith, and is already in germ contained in it. Christ, and with him the fountain of our supernatural life, dwells in us through faith. [Footnote 17] Is Christ, therefore, called the foundation, beside which no other can be laid, [Footnote 18 ]then is faith recognized in the basis of the supernatural order, because by faith we are immediately brought into union with Christ. Wherefore the apostle makes our participation in the fruits of the work of redemption precisely dependent on the condition, "If so ye continue in the faith, grounded and settled." [Footnote 19] The same portion as foundation, which faith has in the inner life of grace in the soul, is also accorded to it in relation to the exterior structure of the Church. The visibility of the true Church is only the historical embodiment of the element of the supernatural. The divine building of the Church has for its foundation the apostles, [Footnote 20] that is, as the sense of the passage evidently is, through the faith which they preached. Very remarkable is the form of expression in the well-known saying of the apostle: "One Lord, one faith, one baptism." [Footnote 21] Here the unity of faith is given the precedence of the unity produced through baptism, as being its necessary pre-requisite. The one baptism is the bond of unity of the Church only in the second line. Through it, namely, the fruitful germ of the one faith in which exclusively the unity of the Church has its root, is continually planted in individual souls, an actual confession of that faith being also included in the ceremony of baptism itself. [Footnote 15: _Trid. Sess._ vi., cap. 8.] [Footnote 16: Heb. xi. i.] [Footnote 17: Eph iii. 17.] [Footnote 18: I Cor. iii. 11.] [Footnote 19: Coloss. i. 23.] [Footnote 20: Eph. ii. 20.] [Footnote 21: Eph. iv. 5.] The Church herself makes use of language which clearly shows that she regards faith as the deepest principle of her being. [Footnote 22] The Catechism of the Council of Trent defines the Church as "the faithful dispersed throughout the world." [Footnote 23] [Footnote 22: _Concil. Lateran., iv. cap. Firmiter: Una fidelium universalis ecclesia_. ] [Footnote 23: _Catech. Rom._, pars 1, cap. x. . qu. 2. ]