Dear Susan, Perhaps the quote below is one you are thinking of:
5. The Lord hath ordained that in every city a House of Justice be established wherein shall gather counsellors to the number of Baha, and should it exceed this number it does not matter... It behoveth them to be the trusted ones of the Merciful among men and to regard themselves as the guardians appointed of God for all that dwell on earth. It is incumbent upon them to take counsel together and to have regard for the interests of the servants of God, for His sake, even as they regard their own interests, and to choose that which is meet and seemly. Thus hath the Lord your God, the Gracious, the Pardoner, commanded you. Beware lest ye put away that which is clearly revealed in His Tablet. Fear God, O ye that perceive. (Baha'u'llah, Synopsis and Codification of the Kitab-i-Aqdas, p. 13)
and this one also:
"To repudiate the validity of the assemblies of the elected ministers of the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh would be to reject those countless Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh and 'Abdu'l-Bahá wherein They have extolled the station of the "trustees of the Merciful," enumerated their privileges and duties, emphasized the glory of their mission, revealed the immensity of their task, and warned them of the attacks they must needs expect from the unwisdom of their friends as well as from the malice of their enemies. It is surely for those to whose hands so priceless a heritage has been committed to prayerfully watch lest the tool should supersede the Faith itself, lest undue concern for the minute details arising from the administration of the Cause obscure the vision of its promoters, lest partiality, ambition, and worldliness tend in the course of time to becloud the radiance, stain the purity, and impair the effectiveness of the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh." (Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, p. 9)
Now, if I were not aware of the Guardian's persnickety precision in his English translations, I might agree that all the previous post references referred to any Baha'i House of Justice. However, I have no doubt that the Guardian understood the capitalization of proper nouns. Having said that; I did notice that there were two quotes from the Guardian, which I included before, where the word *trustees* was not capitalized. I will also concede that there is a margin of error involved from written work to printed text... But, taking that into consideration does not outweigh my gut feeling.
In closing, I took a swim OCEAN and found no other references besides the two quoted here that literally ties the phrase "trustees of the Merciful" to Local Houses of Justice. I view 'Trustees of the Merciful' [as written] to be a specific title or phrase that constitutes the distinctive designation of this particular legislative body.
Lovingly, Sandra
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