According to the sentence of the law which they shall teach you, and according to the judgment which they shall tell you, you shall do: you shall not decline from the sentence which they shall show you, to the right hand, nor to the left.
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Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
Just as a person has to pick his way between fire and water so as to be neither burned nor drowned, so we should steer our way between the pinnacle of pride and the whirlpool of sloth, as it is written, “turning neither to the right nor to the left.” For there are some who, through fear of being carried up to the heights on the right, slip and are drowned on the left. Others … fear to be sucked in by the soft ease of sloth on the left and are ruined and destroyed by the ostentation of boasting on the other side, and [they] vanish into smoke and ashes.
According This law was to be the rule of the priests, in passing sentence. It was not left to the judgment of individuals to comply or not, according as they might explain the law for themselves. Such a proceeding would be nugatory, as they would thus be themselves the ultimate judges of their own cause. (Haydock)
They shall seek the law at his (the priest's) mouth, Malachi as ii. 7. Protestants make, therefore, a very frivolous restriction, when they allow his sentence to bind only "so long as he is the true minister of God, and pronounceth according to his word. "(Bible, 1603.) (Worthington)
If any had been proud enough among the Jews, to persuade himself that he understood the law better than the high priest, he would not on that account have escaped death. (Haydock)
The authority of the Christian Church is not inferior to that of the Synagogue, only, "instead of death, excommunication is now inflicted "on the rebellious. (St. Gregory, Matthew xviii. 17.; St. Augustine, q. 38.) I...
