ABSTRACT
The principle of equivalence thus conceived of as essential to justice entailed a corresponding emphasis on rewards and punishments: for it is by those means that good reaps good, and bad reaps bad, by which do-well has well and do-evil has evil, as Langland puts it. Justice was the chief attribute of the King of heaven, and the earthly king who represents Him is therefore most truly a king “when he metes out reward to virtue and punishment to vice with a just and equal balance”. Justice ensures that others ‘weigh equally’ with oneself, and that in all respects there is rendered them their due “according to equality”. The miscreant had borrowed from justice, and was in debt to it to the tune of whatever penalty it took to ‘pay for’ the offence. The supreme day of justice, Judgment Day, was likewise thought of as a great and final settlement of accounts, a universal debt-paying.
