Hence he concludes that justice is a rule of reason, the keeping of covenants being the surest way to preserve our life, and therefore a law of nature.

He rejects the notion that laws of nature are to be supposed conducive, not to the preservation of life on earth, but to the attainment of eternal felicity; whereto such breach of covenant as rebellion may sometimes be supposed a means.

For that, the knowledge of the future life is too uncertain.

Finally, he consistently holds that faith is to be kept with heretics and with all that it has once been pledged to.
He goes on to distinguish between justice of men or manners, and justice of actions; whereby in the one case men are _just_ or _righteous_, and in the other, _guiltless_.

After making the common observation that single inconsistent acts do not destroy a character for justice or injustice, he has this: 'That which gives to human actions the relish of justice, is a certain nobleness or gallantness of courage rarely found, by which a man scorns to be beholden for the contentment of his life to fraud, or breach of promise.' Then he shows the difference between injustice, injury, and damage; asserts that nothing done to a mail with his consent can be injury; and, rejecting the common mode of distinguishing between _commutative_ and _distributive_ justice, calls the first the justice of a contractor, and the other an improper name for just distribution, or the justice of an arbitrator, _i.e._, the act of defining what is just--equivalent to equity, which is itself a law of nature.
The rest of the laws follow in swift succession.