The Karaite
Cotton Mather’s Essays to do good (Bonifacius) (1710) famous impacted Benjamin Franklin. In his youth, Franklin (1706-1790) met Mather (1663-1728), a fact that reminds us how tight the connection between the old world and the new really was. Mather’s impact on the founding generation is traceable. Franklin’s pseudonym, Silence Dogood, was likely a play on Mather’s Essays. Samuel Adams was less subtle, employing “Cotton Mather” as one of his 30 (or more) pen names in the Boston Gazette along with another, “The Puritan.” These two typically railed against the lax piety of the time.
Our present interest is in Mather’s instructions for the legal vocation. In his Bonifacius, Mather discusses several vocations, among them the lawyer. Consider this a refresher if you are studying for your MPRE and then some.
The lawyer should be a scholar, opens Mather. Lawyers, counselors, are “called upon to be wise.” Wise to what end? To do good. Before a lawyer, properly, can be made, “A Foundation of Piety must be first laid.” The law of God must be the rule of action, regulating all practice of human law.
These are to be the First Laws with you: and as all the Laws that are contrary to these, are ipso facto null and void; So in the Practice of the Law, every thing that is Disallow'd by these, is to be avoided. The man whom the Scripture calls, A Lawyer, was a Karaite, or one who kept close to the Written Law of God, in opposition to the Pharisee, and the Traditionist.
Adherence to the higher, divine law will guarantee that the Karaite does good in the world and will redeem both his profession and household. Indeed, lawyers, are to offer their services “unto the Cause of Christianity.” They should be “among the Best of Christians.” Nothing should be done that is contrary to the maxim, “Glory to God in the Highest, on Earth Peace, Good-will towards men.” Lawyers especially, by nature of their work, should meditate on “a Judgment to come.”
Lawyers should take no “dirty cause” or unjust case; they should not suck money out of pitiful clients; they should not charge excessive fees; they should not exploit the elderly; they should not confound or suppress evidence; and et cetera. More than that, they should be a good neighbor, a good citizen. The lawyer should, in a sense, be a nationalist. He should, with the power given him, work to shape his community and nation for the good. Where he finds disorderly, mischievous, or unjust laws, the lawyer should work to mend them. He should work to mend and reform society itself. The lawyer, whatever his practice, is definitionally a public figure for Mather, and so they are. The lawyer should ask himself daily, “Is there any Remarkable Disorder in the Place, that requires our Endeavour for the Suppression of it? And in what Good, Fair, likely way, may we Endeavour it?”
