LXXXVI. The administration of justice being, according to the revealed
principles, a divine office, was naturally to be confided to persons
carefully selected for their intelligence, probity, incorruptibility,
and superiority to every human regard; these are therefore invested with
a judicial representation of the Divinity on earth, and are enjoined to
proceed according to the rules of the strictest justice, without ever
deferring either to the pitiable condition of the poor, or to the
influence of the powerful. As a corollary to this system, every person
is bound to appeal to these authorities in any emergency, and to refrain
from taking the law into his own hands; even for the correction of the
disorders of one's own child, the law requires a recourse to the
constituted authority, not permitting the infliction of punishments of
any kind, without the intervention of those appointed to administer
justice. Passing to the other observances, which grow out of the grand
duty to be just to all, we are strictly commanded to respect the
property, the rights and the honour of others, to be solicitous of their
welfare, as much as of our own, to act honestly, sincerely and
faithfully on every occasion, to fulfil our promises, to facilitate to
others the success to which they are justly entitled, and to pardon our
enemies. From the multifarious and varied ties which bind the individual
to family and society, issue the special duties of husband and wife, of
fathers, of children, of relations, as well as the regard due to
misfortune, respect to the aged, the virtuous, the learned, the
magistrates, and the authorities of the state, attachment to the
country, and obedience and loyalty to the sovereign, who, in the
language of the Bible, is constituted by God to govern the destinies of
the people committed to his or her care. All these duties, which branch
off into many specialities, are either explicitly declared, or
incontestably result, by analogies and sound hermeneutical deductions,
from the various texts referring to such subjects.

LXXXVII. But not to strict justice alone our conduct towards our
fellow-men must conform itself; we are bound to act on the principles of
the most generous benevolence and charity. Those acts of a noble mind
and a magnanimous heart, commonly called virtue, which are by moralists
only _recommended_, as meritorious works, are by the Divine law
_enjoined_, as obligatory, in the most absolute sense.