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Kroenke 40th Anniversary Edition
Auer
Vandenberg
Yoder
D ATA B A S E P R O C E S S I N G
FUNDAMENTALS, DESIGN, AND IMPLEMENTATION
D ATA B A S E P R O C E S S I N G
FUNDAMENTALS, DESIGN, AND IMPLEMENTATION
FIFTEENTH
David M. Kroenke David J. Auer Scott L. Vandenberg Robert C. Yoder
www.pearson.com
EDITION
FIFTEENTH EDITION
vi Contents
Using SQL Scripts to Create and Populate Database Tables • Creating the View Ridge
Gallery VRG Database Table Structure • Reviewing Database Structures in the SQL
Server GUI Display • Indexes • Populating the VRG Database Tables with Data
• Creating SQL Views
Importing Microsoft Excel Data into a Microsoft SQL Server Database Table
Microsoft SQL Server 2017 Application Logic
Transact-SQL • User-Defined Functions • Stored Procedures • Triggers
Microsoft SQL Server 2017 Concurrency Control
Transaction Isolation Level • Cursor Concurrency • Locking Hints
Microsoft SQL Server 2017 Security
SQL Server 2017 Database Security Settings
Microsoft SQL Server 2017 Backup and Recovery
Backing Up a Database • SQL Server Recovery Models • Restoring a Database
• Database Maintenance Plans
Topics Not Discussed in This Chapter
Summary • Key Terms • Review Questions • Exercises • Case Questions
• The Queen Anne Curiosity Shop Project Questions • Morgan Importing Project
Questions
Appendices
Appendix H: Getting Started with Web Servers, PHP, and the NetBeans IDE
Chapter Objectives
What Is the Purpose of This Appendix?
Which Operating System are we Discussing?
How Do I Install a Web Server?
How Do I Set Up IIS in Windows 10?
How Do I Manage IIS in Windows 10?
How Is a Web Site Structured?
How Do I View a Web Page from the IIS Web Server?
How Is Web Site Security Managed?
What is Java?
What Is the NetBeans IDE?
How Do I Install the Java Development Kit (JDK) and the NetBeans IDE?
What Is PHP?
How Do I Install PHP?
How Do I Check PHP to Make Sure it is Running Correctly?
How Do I Create a Web Page Using the NetBeans IDE?
How Do I Manage the PHP Configuration?
Key Terms • Review Questions • Exercises
Appendix I: XML
Chapter Objectives
What Is the Purpose of This Appendix?
Extensible Markup Language (XML)
XML as a Markup Language • Materializing XML Documents with XSLT
XML Schema versus Document Type Declarations
XML Schema Validation • Elements and Attributes • Flat Versus Structured Schemas
• Global Elements
Creating XML Documents from Database Data
Using the SQL SELECT . . . FOR XML Statement • Multi-table SELECT with FOR XML
• An XML Schema for All CUSTOMER Purchases • A Schema with Two Multivalued Paths
Bibliography 621
Glossary 623
Index 639
The publisher has asked me to write a short history of this text for this, the 40th anniversary
edition. The details of each edition and how they changed are instructive, but this text and
the discipline of database processing grew up together, and the story of how that happened
might be more helpful to students who will work in disciplines, such as Big Data, that are
emerging today.
1
CODASYL, the Committee on Data Systems Languages, was the committee, chaired by Grace Hopper (see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper), that developed the COBOL language standard. DBTG, the database
task group, was a subcommittee tasked with developing a data modeling standard. The DBTG model was
popular for a short while, but was replaced by the relational model by the 1980s.
2
IBM IMS is still a functional DBMS product—see www-01.ibm.com/software/data/ims/index.html.
xvii
hexadecimal numbers to navigate our way around the printout, sticking rulers in the listing as
place markers. Stiff, wooden rulers were the best.
Again, though, we were just trying to solve a problem. We didn’t have any idea that the
technology we were developing would become an important part of the emerging world.
Imagine Amazon or your college without database processing. But all of that was in the future.
We were just trying to get the “darn thing” to run and somehow solve the particular problem
that we’d been assigned.
For example, an important function of those early systems was to manage relationships.
In our simulation, we had bombers and tankers and opposing radar sites and opposing air-to-
air missiles. We needed to keep track of which of those was assigned or related to which. We
just wrote programs to do that. A decade or two later someone discovered in surprise, “Hey,
there’s as much information in the relationships as there is in the data.”
We made stuff up as we went along. The first edition of this text included no definition
of database. When a reviewer pointed that out, I made one up for the second edition. “A self-
describing collection of integrated records.” Completely fabricated, but it’s worked now for
35 years, so it must have been serviceable.
Situations like that were common in those early projects. We made stuff up that would
help us solve our problem. Progress was slow, mistakes were frequent, failures were common.
Millions of dollars and labor hours were wasted. But gradually, over time, database technol-
ogy emerged.
In 1973 I completed my military commitment and following John Denver’s song “Rocky
Mountain High” moved my family from Washington, D.C., to Colorado State University. The
business school hired me as an instructor while I attended graduate school in statistics and
engineering across the street. To my delight, I was assigned to teach a course entitled File
Management, the predecessor of today’s Database Processing course (see Figure FM-1).
As with any young instructor, I wanted to teach what I knew and that was the rudiments
of database processing. So, I began to formulate a database course and by the spring of 1975,
was looking for a textbook. I asked the book reps if they had such a book and none did. The
sales rep for SRA, however, asked, “No, but we’re looking for one. Why don’t you write it?” My
department chair, Bob Rademacher, encouraged me to do so, and on June 29, 1975, I signed
the contract.
FIGURE FM-1
David Kroenke Loses
Control of Students Excited
by Database Technology
FIGURE FM-2
How Textbooks Were Written
The draft and all the diagrams were written in number 2 pencil on the back of old coding
sheets, as shown in Figure FM-02. The text would go to a typist, who’d do the best she could
to decipher my writing. I’d proof the typing and she’d produce another typed manuscript
(long before word processing—pages had to be retyped to remove errors). Those pages would
then go to a copy editor and I would redo them again, back to the typist for a round or two.
Eventually, the final typed manuscript would go to a compositor who would produce long gray
sheets (called galleys) of text to be proofed. After that, the text would be glued (I’m not kid-
ding) to make up pages, integrating the art which had been following a similar pathway, and
then those pages would be photographed and sent to a printer.
The final draft of the first edition was completed in January 1976, and the text was pub-
lished in January 1977. We were proud that it only took a year.
Database Processing was the first such textbook aimed at the information systems market.
C. J. Date had produced Database Systems prior to this text, but his book was aimed at com-
puter science students.3 No one knew what should be in an information systems database
book. I made it up, we sent drafts to reviewers, and they approved it. (They didn’t know
either.)
3
C. J. Date’s book An Introduction to Database Systems is currently in its eighth edition.
FIGURE FM-3
Cover of the First Edition
of Database Processing
The first edition (see Figure FM-3) had chapters on file management and data structures.
It also had chapters on hierarchical, network, and relational data models. By the way, E. F.
Codd, the creator of the relational data model, was relatively unknown at that point and he
was happy to review the relational chapter. The text also featured a description of the features
and functions of five DBMS products: ADABAS, System 2000, Total, IDMS, and IMS. (To my
knowledge, only IMS is still in use today.) It wrapped up with a chapter on database adminis-
tration.
When writing that last chapter, I thought it would be a good idea to talk with an auditor
to learn what auditors looked for when auditing database systems. Accordingly, I drove to
Denver and met with one of the top auditors at one of the then-Big-Eight firms. I didn’t learn
much, just some high-level hyperbole about using commonly accepted auditing standards.
The next day, the phone rang in my office and an executive in New York City invited me out to
that firm for a job interview for a position to develop and teach database auditing standards to
their staff. None of us knew what we were doing!
I had no idea of how incredibly fortunate I was. To stumble into a discipline that would
become one of the most important in the information systems field, to have experience and
knowledge to put into a text, to have a supportive department, and, finally, to have what was at
that time a superb publisher with an outstanding sales and marketing team (see Figure FM-4).
Because it was all I had known, I thought it was normal. Ah, youth.
Lessons Learned
At age 71, I’m not quite consigned to watching the daytime weather channel but have
reached the stage when people start listing lessons learned. I’ll try to keep it brief. Here are
my five lessons learned, developed both as a database technology bystander and participant:
FIGURE FM-4
Hot Marketing Handout
1977—Note Text Price
4
For more information on R:Base, see the Wikipedia article R:Base (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R:Base). Now
called RBASE, this is still a functional DBMS product—see http://www.rbase.com/.
families ever since. However, some of the just-competent professionals confused their good
luck with exceptional personal ability and founded their own companies or started venture
capital firms. Most lost their money. They were good, but they weren’t of the same caliber as
Gates et al.
Joseph Conrad said it, “It is the mark of an inexperienced man not to believe in luck.”
5
dBbase is still a functional DBMS product—see http://www.dbase.com
6
Christensen, Clayton M. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Reprint edi-
tion). (Brighton, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2106)
Don’t look for the market leaders in big data or robotics to come from existing, large ven-
dors. They will come from smaller companies that can position themselves to thrive in the
new environment. If you haven’t learned Christensen’s model, you should.
David Auer
I was introduced to David Kroenke while working on the Instructor’s Manual for the
ninth edition of Database Processing. Because we were both living and teaching in western
Washington State, we could get together for meals and discussions. This led to my working
on the companion textbook, Database Concepts, being a technical reader for the 10th edition
of Database Processing, and then being asked to become a coauthor for the 11th edition of
Database Processing.
[132] Dr. Richard Field's "Of the Church," folio ed., Oxford,
1628, p. 58.—Ed.
[133] This word occurs but once in the New Testament,
Romans v. 11, the marginal rendering being reconciliation. The
personal noun, καταλλακτης, is still in use with the modern
Greeks for a money-changer, or one who takes the debased
currency, so general in countries under a despotic or other
dishonest government, in exchange for sterling coin or bullion;
the purchaser paying the catallage, that is, the difference. In the
elder Greek writers, the verb means to exchange for an opposite,
as, κατακκασσετο την εχθρην τοις στασιωταις.—He exchanged
within himself enmity for friendship, (that is, he reconciled
himself) with his party;—or, as we say, made it up with them, an
idiom which (with whatever loss of dignity) gives the exact force
of the word. He made up the difference. The Hebrew word of
very frequent occurrence in the Pentateuch, which we render by
the substantive, atonement, has its radical or visual image, in
copher, pitch. Gen. vi. 14: Thou shalt pitch it within and without
with pitch. Hence to unite, to fill up a breach, or leak, the word
expressing both the act, namely, the bringing together what had
been previously separated, and the means, or material, by which
the re-union is effected, as in our English verbs, to caulk, to
solder, to poy or pay (from poix, pitch), and the French suiver.
Thence, metaphorically, expiation, the piacula having the same
root, and being grounded on another property or use of gums
and resins, the supposed cleansing powers of their fumigation.
Numbers viii. 21: made atonement for the Levites to cleanse
them.—Lastly (or if we are to believe the Hebrew Lexicons,
properly and most frequently) it means ransom. But if by proper
the Interpreters mean primary and radical, the assertion does not
need a confutation: all radicals belonging to one or other of three
classes. 1. Interjections, or sounds expressing sensations or
passions. 2. Imitations of sounds, as splash, roar, whiz, &c. 3.
and principally, visual images, objects of sight. But as to
frequency, in all the numerous (fifty, I believe,) instances of the
word in the Old Testament, I have not found one in which it can,
or at least need, be rendered by ransom: though beyond all
doubt ransom is used in the Epistle to Timothy, as an equivalent
term.
[134] Review of the Memoirs of the Rev. J. Scott and Rev. J.
Newton, 'Quarterly Review,' April, 1824.—Ed.
[135] Dedication to Taylor's 'Holy Dying,' p. 295, Bohn's
Standard Library edition.—Ed.
[136] Appendix to Strype's 'Life of Cranmer.'—Ed.
[137] Slightly altered from the 'Worthy Communicant,' chap. iii.
sect. v.; p. 523, vol. xv. of Heber's edition of Jeremy Taylor's
works.—Ed.
APHORISM XX.
Jeremy Taylor.
Whatever is against right reason, that no faith can oblige us to
believe. For though reason is not the positive and affirmative
measure of our faith, and our faith ought to be larger than our
[speculative] reason, and take something into her heart, that reason
can never take into her eye; yet in all our creed there can be nothing
against reason. If reason justly contradicts an article, it is not "of the
household of Faith." In this there is no difficulty, but that in practice
we take care that we do not call that reason, which is not so (see p.
122). For although reason is a right judge,[138] yet it ought not to
pass sentence in an inquiry of faith, until all the information be
brought in; all that is within, and all that is without, all that is above,
and all that is below; all that concerns it in experience, and all that
concerns it in act: whatsoever is of pertinent observation and
whatsoever is revealed. For else reason may argue very well and yet
conclude falsely. It may conclude well in logic, and yet infer a false
proposition in theology (p. 115). But when our judge is fully and
truly informed in all that whence she is to make her judgment, we
may safely follow her whithersoever she invites us.
APHORISM XXI.
Jeremy Taylor.
He that speaks against his own reason, speaks against his own
conscience: and therefore it is certain, no man serves God with a
good conscience, who serves him against his reason.
APHORISM XXII.
Jeremy Taylor.
APHORISM XXIII.
Jeremy Taylor.
Comment.
A fact may be truly stated, and yet the Cause or Reason assigned
for it mistaken; or inadequate; or pars pro toto—one only or few of
many that might or should have been adduced. The preceding
Aphorism is an instance in point. The phenomenon here brought
forward by the Bishop, as the ground and occasion of men's belief of
a future state—viz. the frequent, not to say ordinary, disproportion
between moral worth and worldly prosperity—must, indeed, at all
times and in all countries of the civilized world have led the
observant and reflecting few, the men of meditative habits and
strong feelings of natural equity, to a nicer consideration of the
current belief, whether instinctive or traditional. By forcing the Soul
in upon herself, this enigma of saint and sage, from Job, David and
Solomon to Claudian and Boetius,—this perplexing disparity of
success and desert, has, I doubt not, with such men been the
occasion of a steadier and more distinct consciousness of a
something in man different in kind, and which not merely
distinguishes but contra-distinguishes, him from brute animals—at
the same time that it has brought into closer view an enigma of yet
harder solution—the fact, I mean, of a contradiction in the human
being, of which no traces are observable elsewhere, in animated or
inanimate nature. A struggle of jarring impulses; a mysterious
diversity between the injunctions of the mind and the elections of
the will; and (last not least) the utter incommensurateness and the
unsatisfying qualities of the things around us, that yet are the only
objects which our senses discover, or our appetites require us to
pursue:—hence for the finer and more contemplative spirits the
ever-strengthening suspicion, that the two phenomena must in some
way or other stand in close connexion with each other, and that the
Riddle of Fortune and Circumstance is but a form or effluence of the
Riddle of Man:—and hence again, the persuasion, that the solution
of both problems is to be sought for—hence the presentiment, that
this solution will be found—in the contra-distinctive constituent of
humanity, in the something of human nature which is exclusively
human;—and—as the objects discoverable by the senses, as all the
bodies and substances that we can touch, measure, and weigh, are
either mere totals, the unity of which results from the parts, and is
of course only apparent; or substances, the unity of action of which
is owing to the nature or arrangement of the partible bodies which
they actuate or set in motion, (steam for instance, in a steam-
engine); as on the one hand the conditions and known or
conceivable properties of all the objects which perish and utterly
cease to be, together with all the properties which we ourselves
have in common with these perishable things, differ in kind from the
acts and properties peculiar to our humanity, so that the former
cannot even be conceived, cannot without a contradiction in terms
be predicated, of the proper and immediate subject of the latter—
(for who would not smile at an ounce of Truth, or a square foot of
Honour?)—and as, on the other hand, whatever things in visible
nature have the character of Permanence, and endure amid
continual flux unchanged like a rainbow in a fast-flying shower, (for
example, Beauty, Order, Harmony, Finality, Law,) are all akin to the
peculia of humanity, are all congenera of Mind and Will, without
which indeed they would not only exist in vain, as pictures for moles,
but actually not exist at all;—hence, finally, the conclusion, that the
soul of man, as the subject of Mind and Will, must likewise possess a
principle of permanence, and be destined to endure. And were these
grounds lighter than they are, yet as a small weight will make a
scale descend, where there is nothing in the opposite scale, or
painted weights, which have only an illusive relief or prominence; so
in the scale of immortality slight reasons are in effect weighty, and
sufficient to determine the judgment, there being no counter-weight,
no reasons against them, and no facts in proof of the contrary, that
would not prove equally well the cessation of the eye on the removal
or diffraction of the eye-glass, and the dissolution or incapacity of
the musician on the fracture of his instrument or its strings.
But though I agree with Taylor so far, as not to doubt that the
misallotment of worldly goods and fortunes was one principal
occasion, exciting well-disposed and spiritually-awakened natures by
reflections and reasonings, such as I have here supposed, to mature
the presentiment of immortality into full consciousness, into a
principle of action and a well-spring of strength and consolation; I
cannot concede to this circumstance any thing like the importance
and extent of efficacy which he in this passage attributes to it. I am
persuaded, that as the belief of all mankind, of all[144] tribes, and
nations, and languages, in all ages, and in all states of social union,
it must be referred to far deeper grounds, common to man as man;
and that its fibres are to be traced to the tap-root of humanity. I
have long entertained, and do not hesitate to avow, the conviction,
that the argument, from Universality of belief, urged by Barrow and
others in proof of the first article of the Creed, is neither in point of
fact—for two very different objects may be intended, and two, or
more, diverse and even contradictory conceptions may be
expressed, by the same name—nor in legitimacy of conclusion as
strong and unexceptionable, as the argument from the same ground
for the continuance of our personal being after death. The bull-calf
butts with smooth and unarmed brow. Throughout animated nature,
of each characteristic organ and faculty there exists a pre-assurance,
an instinctive and practical anticipation; and no pre-assurance
common to a whole species does in any instance prove delusive.[145]
All other prophecies of nature have their exact fulfilment—in every
other ingrafted word of promise, nature is found true to her word;
and is it in her noblest creature, that she tells her first lie?—(The
reader will, of course, understand, that I am here speaking in the
assumed character of a mere naturalist, to whom no light of
revelation had been vouchsafed; one, who
—— with gentle heart
Had worshipp'd Nature in the hill and valley,
Not knowing what he loved, but loved it all!)
Whether, however, the introductory part of the Bishop's argument
is to be received with more or less qualification, the fact itself, as
stated in the concluding sentence of the Aphorism, remains
unaffected, and is beyond exception true.
If other argument and yet higher authority were required, I might
refer to St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, and to the Epistle to the
Hebrews, which whether written by Paul or, as Luther conjectured,
by Apollos, is out of all doubt the work of an Apostolic man filled
with the Holy Spirit, and composed while the Temple and the glories
of the Temple worship were yet in existence. Several of the Jewish
and still Judaizing converts had begun to vacillate in their faith, and
to stumble at the stumbling-stone of the contrast between the pomp
and splendour of the old Law and the simplicity and humility of the
Christian Church. To break this sensual charm, to unfascinate these
bedazzled brethren, the writer to the Hebrews institutes a
comparison between the two religions, and demonstrates the
superior spiritual grandeur, the greater intrinsic worth and dignity of
the religion of Christ. On the other hand, at Rome where the Jews
formed a numerous, powerful, and privileged class (many of them,
too, by their proselyting zeal and frequent disputations with the
priests and philosophers trained and exercised polemics) the
recently-founded Christian Church was, it appears, in greater danger
from the reasonings of the Jewish doctors and even of its own
Judaizing members, respecting the use of the new revelation. Thus
the object of the Epistle to the Hebrews was to prove the superiority
of the Christian Religion; the object of the Epistle to the Romans to
prove its necessity. Now there was one argument extremely well
calculated to stagger a faith newly transplanted and still loose at its
roots, and which, if allowed, seemed to preclude the possibility of
the Christian religion, as an especial and immediate revelation from
God—on the high grounds, at least, on which the Apostle of the
Gentiles placed it, and with the exclusive rights and superseding
character, which he claimed for it. "You admit" (said they) "the divine
origin and authority of the Law given to Moses, proclaimed with
thunders and lightnings and the voice of the Most High heard by all
the people from Mount Sinai, and introduced, enforced, and
perpetuated by a series of the most stupendous miracles. Our
religion then was given by God: and can God give a perishable
imperfect religion? If not perishable, how can it have a successor? If
perfect, how can it need to be superseded?—The entire argument is
indeed comprised in the latter attribute of our Law. We know, from
an authority which you yourselves acknowledge for divine, that our
religion is perfect. He is the Rock, and his Work is perfect. (Deuter.
xxxii. 4.) If then the religion revealed by God himself to our
forefathers is perfect, what need have we of another?"—This
objection, both from its importance and from its extreme plausibility,
for the persons at least, to whom it was addressed, required an
answer in both Epistles. And accordingly, the answer is included in
the one (that to the Hebrews) and it is the especial purpose and
main subject of the other. And how does the Apostle answer it?
Suppose—and the case is not impossible[146] —a man of sense, who
had studied the evidences of Priestley and Paley with Warburton's
Divine Legation, but who should be a perfect stranger to the
Writings of St. Paul: and that I put this question to him:—"What do
you think, will St. Paul's answer be?" "Nothing," he would reply, "can
be more obvious. It is in vain, the Apostle will urge, that you bring
your notions of probability and inferences from the arbitrary
interpretation of a word in an absolute rather than a relative sense,
to invalidate a known fact. It is a fact, that your Religion is (in your
sense of the word) not perfect: for it is deficient in one of the two
essential constituents of all true religion, the belief of a future state
on solid and sufficient grounds. Had the doctrine indeed been
revealed, the stupendous miracles, which you most truly affirm to
have accompanied and attested the first promulgation of your
religion, would have supplied the requisite proof. But the doctrine
was not revealed; and your belief of a future state rests on no solid
grounds. You believe it (as far as you believe it, and as many of you
as profess this belief) without revelation, and without the only
proper and sufficient evidence of its truth. Your religion, therefore,
though of divine Origin is, (if taken in disjunction from the new
revelation, which I am commissioned to proclaim) but a religio
dimidiata; and the main purpose, the proper character, and the
paramount object of Christ's mission and miracles, is to supply the
missing half by a clear discovery of a future state;—and (since "he
alone discovers who proves") by proving the truth of the doctrine,
now for the first time declared with the requisite authority, by the
requisite, appropriate, and alone satisfactory evidences."
But is this the Apostle's answer to the Jewish oppugners, and the
Judaizing false brethren, of the Church of Christ?—It is not the
answer, it does not resemble the answer returned by the Apostle. It
is neither parallel nor corradial with the line of argument in either of
the two Epistles, or with any one line; but it is a chord that traverses
them all, and only touches where it cuts across. In the Epistle to the
Hebrews the directly contrary position is repeatedly asserted: and in
the Epistle to the Romans it is every where supposed. The death to
which the Law sentenced all sinners (and which even the Gentiles
without the revealed Law had announced to them by their
consciences, the judgment of God having been made known even to
them) must be the same death, from which they were saved by the
faith of the Son of God; or the Apostle's reasoning would be
senseless, his antithesis a mere equivoque, a play on a word, quod
idem sonat, aliud vult. Christ redeemed mankind from the curse of
the Law: and we all know, that it was not from temporal death, or
the penalties and afflictions of the present life, that believers have
been redeemed. The Law, of which the inspired sage of Tarsus is
speaking, from which no man can plead excuse; the Law
miraculously delivered in thunders from Mount Sinai, which was
inscribed on tables of stone for the Jews, and written in the hearts
of all men (Rom. ii. 15.)—the Law holy and spiritual! what was the
great point, of which this Law, in its own name, offered no solution?
the mystery, which it left behind the veil, or in the cloudy tabernacle
of types and figurative sacrifices? Whether there was a judgment to
come, and souls to suffer the dread sentence? Or was it not far
rather—what are the means of escape; where may grace be found,
and redemption? St. Paul says, the latter. The Law brings
condemnation: but the conscience-sentenced transgressor's
question, "What shall I do to be saved? Who will intercede for me?"
she dismisses as beyond the jurisdiction of her court, and takes no
cognizance thereof, save in prophetic murmurs or mute
outshadowings of mystic ordinances and sacrificial types.—Not,
therefore, that there is a Life to come, and a future state; but what
each individual Soul may hope for itself therein; and on what
grounds; and that this state has been rendered an object of
aspiration and fervent desire, and a source of thanksgiving and
exceeding great joy; and by whom, and through whom, and for
whom, and by what means and under what conditions—these are
the peculiar and distinguishing fundamentals of the Christian Faith!
These are the revealed Lights and obtained Privileges of the
Christian Dispensation! Not alone the knowledge of the boon, but
the precious inestimable Boon itself, is the Grace and Truth that
came by Jesus Christ! I believe Moses, I believe Paul; but I believe
in Christ.
[139] Coleridge quotes this passage in his Conclusion.—Ed.
[140] J. Taylor's 'Worthy Communicant.'—H.N.C.
[141] Isaiah xxxiv. compared with Matt. x. 34, and Luke xii. 49.
—H.N.C.
[142] Conclusion, Part III. ch. 8.—H.N.C.
[143] Sermon at the Funeral of Sir George Dalston.—H.N.C.
[144] I say, all: for the accounts of one or two travelling French
philosophers, professed atheists and partizans of infidelity,
respecting one or two African hordes, Caffres, and poor outlawed
Boschmen, hunted out of their humanity, ought not to be
regarded as exceptions. And as to Hearne's assertion respecting
the non-existence and rejection of the belief among the Copper-
Indians, it is not only hazarded on very weak and insufficient
grounds, but he himself, in another part of his work,
unconsciously supplies data, from whence the contrary may
safely be concluded. Hearne, perhaps, put down his friend
Motannabbi's Fort-philosophy for the opinion of his tribe; and
from his high appreciation of the moral character of this
murderous gymnosophist, it might, I fear, be inferred, that
Hearne himself was not the very person one would, of all others,
have chosen for the purpose of instituting the inquiry.
[145] See Baron Field's Letters from New South Wales. The
poor natives, the lowest in the scale of humanity, evince no
symptom of any religion, or the belief of any superior power as
the maker of the world; but yet have no doubt that the spirits of
their ancestors survive in the form of porpoises, and mindful of
their descendants with imperishable affection, drive the whales
ashore for them to feast on.
[146] The case here supposed actually occurred in my own
experience in the person of a Spanish refugee, of English
parents, but from his tenth year resident in Spain, and bred in a
family of wealthy, but ignorant and bigoted, Roman Catholics. In
mature manhood he returned to England, disgusted with the
conduct of the priests and monks, which had indeed for some
years produced on his mind its so common effect among the
better-informed natives of the South of Europe—a tendency to
Deism. The results, however, of the infidel system in France, with
his opportunities of observing the effects of irreligion on the
French officers in Spain, on the one hand; and the undeniable
moral and intellectual superiority of Protestant Britain on the
other; had not been lost on him: and here he began to think for
himself and resolved to study the subject. He had gone through
Bishop Warburton's Divine Legation, and Paley's Evidences; but
had never read the New Testament consecutively, and the
Epistles not at all.
APHORISM.
ON BAPTISM.
Leighton.
In those days came John the Baptist, preaching.—It will suffice for
our present purpose, if by these[147] words we direct the attention
to the origin, or at least first Scriptural record, of Baptism, and to the
combinement of Preaching therewith; their aspect each to the other,
and their concurrence to one excellent end: the Word unfolding the
Sacrament, and the Sacrament sealing the Word; the Word as a
Light, informing and clearing the sense of the Seal; and this again,
as a Seal, confirming and ratifying the truth of the Word; as you see
some significant seals, or engraven signets, have a word about them
expressing their sense.
But truly the word is a light and the sacraments have in them of
the same light illuminating them. This sacrament of Baptism, the
ancients do particularly express by light. Yet are they both nothing
but darkness to us, till the same light shine in our hearts; for till then
we are nothing but darkness ourselves, and therefore the most
luminous things are so to us. Noonday is as midnight to a blind man.
And we see these ordinances, the word and the sacrament, without
profit or comfort for the most part, because we have not of that
Divine Light within us. And we have it not, because we ask it not.
Comment.
Or an Aid to Reflection in the forming of a sound Judgment
respecting the purport and purpose of the Baptismal Rite, and a just
appreciation of its value and importance.
A born and bred Baptist, and paternally descended from the old
orthodox Non-conformists, and both in his own and in his father's
right a very dear friend of mine, had married a member of the
National Church. In consequence of an anxious wish expressed by
his lady for the baptism of their first child, he solicited me to put him
in possession of my Views respecting this controversy; though
principally as to the degree of importance which I attached to it. For
as to the point itself, his natural prepossession in favour of the
persuasion in which he was born, had been confirmed by a
conscientious examination of the arguments on both sides. As the
Comment on the preceding Aphorism, or rather as an expansion of
its subject matter, I will give the substance of the conversation: and
amply shall I have been remunerated, should it be read with the
interest and satisfaction with which it was heard. More particularly,
should any of my readers find themselves under the same or similar
circumstances.
Our discussion is rendered shorter and more easy by our perfect
agreement in certain preliminary points. We both disclaim alike every
attempt to explain any thing into Scripture, and every attempt to
explain any thing out of Scripture. Or if we regard either with a
livelier aversion, it is the latter, as being the more fashionable and
prevalent. I mean the practice of both high and low Grotian Divines
to explain away positive assertions of Scripture on the pretext, that
the literal sense is not agreeable to reason, that is, their particular
reason. And inasmuch as (in the only right sense of the word), there
is no such thing as a particular reason, they must, and in fact they
do, mean, that the literal sense is not accordant to their
understanding, that is, to the notions which their understandings
have been taught and accustomed to form in their school of
philosophy. Thus a Platonist who should become a Christian, would
at once, even in texts susceptible of a different interpretation,
recognize, because he would expect to find, several doctrines which
the disciple of the Epicurean or mechanic school will not receive on
the most positive declarations of the Divine Word. And as we agree
in the opinion, that the Minimi-fidian party[148] err grievously in the
latter point, so I must concede to you, that too many Pædo-baptists
(assertors of Infant Baptism) have erred, though less grossly, in the
former. I have, I confess, no eye for these smoke-like wreaths of
inference, this ever widening spiral ergo from the narrow aperture of
perhaps a single text; or rather an interpretation forced into it by
construing an idiomatic phrase in an artless narrative with the same
absoluteness, as if it had formed part of a mathematical problem. I
start back from these inverted Pyramids, where the apex is the base.
If I should inform any one that I had called at a friend's house, but
had found nobody at home, the family having all gone to the play;
and if he on the strength of this information, should take occasion to
asperse my friend's wife for unmotherly conduct in taking an infant,
six months old, to a crowded theatre; would you allow him to press
on the words "nobody" and "all" the family, in justification of the
slander? Would you not tell him, that the words were to be
interpreted by the nature of the subject, the purpose of the speaker,
and their ordinary acceptation; and that he must, or might have
known, that infants of that age would not be admitted into the
theatre? Exactly so, with regard to the words, he and all his
household. Had Baptism of infants at that early period of the Gospel
been a known practice, or had this been previously demonstrated,—
then indeed the argument, that in all probability there were one or
more infants or young children in so large a family, would be no
otherwise objectionable than as being superfluous, and a sort of
anticlimax in logic. But if the words are cited as the proof, it would
be a clear petitio principii, though there had been nothing else
against it. But when we turn back to the Scriptures preceding the
narrative, and find repentance and belief demanded as the terms
and indispensable conditions of Baptism—then the case above
imagined applies in its full force. Equally vain is the pretended
analogy from Circumcision, which was no Sacrament at all; but the
means and mark of national distinction. In the first instance it was,
doubtless, a privilege or mark of superior rank conferred on the
descendants of Abraham. In the Patriarchal times this rite was
confined (the first governments being Theocracies) to the
priesthood, who were set apart to that office from their birth. At a
later period this token of the premier class was extended to Kings.
And thus, when it was re-ordained by Moses for the whole Jewish
nation, it was at the same time said—Ye are all Priests and Kings; ye
are a consecrated People. In addition to this, or rather in aid of this,
Circumcision was intended to distinguish the Jews by some indelible
sign: and it was no less necessary, that Jewish children should be
recognizable as Jews, than Jewish adults—not to mention the
greater safety of the rite in infancy. Nor was it ever pretended that
any Grace was conferred with it, or that the rite was significant of
any inward or spiritual operation. In short, an unprejudiced and
competent reader need only peruse the first thirty-three paragraphs
of the eighteenth section of Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying; and then
compare with these the remainder of the Section added by him after
the Restoration: those, namely, in which he attempts to overthrow
his own arguments. I had almost said, affects: for such is the
feebleness, and so palpable the sophistry of his answers, that I find
it difficult to imagine, that Taylor himself could have been satisfied
with them. The only plausible arguments apply with equal force to
Baptist and Pædo-baptist; and would prove, if they proved any
thing, that both were wrong, and the Quakers only in the right.
Now, in the first place, it is obvious, that nothing conclusive can
be drawn from the silence of the New Testament respecting a
practice, which, if we suppose it already in use, must yet, from the
character of the first converts, have been of comparatively rare
occurrence; and which from the predominant, and more concerning,
objects and functions of the Apostolic writers (1 Corinth. i. 17.) was
not likely to have been mentioned otherwise than incidentally, and
very probably therefore might not have occurred to them to mention
at all. But, secondly, admitting that the practice was introduced at a
later period than that in which the Acts of the Apostles and the
Epistles were composed: I should yet be fully satisfied, that the
Church exercised herein a sound[149] discretion. On either
supposition, therefore, it is never without regret that I see a divine
of our Church attempting to erect forts on a position so evidently
commanded by the strong-hold of his antagonists. I dread the use
which the Socinians may make of their example, and the Papists of
their failure. Let me not, however, deceive you. (The reader
understands, that I suppose myself conversing with a Baptist.) I am
of opinion, that the divines on your side are chargeable with a far
more grievous mistake, that of giving a carnal and Judaizing
interpretation to the various Gospel texts in which the terms,
baptism and baptize, occur, contrary to the express and earnest
admonitions of the Apostle Paul. And this I say, without in the least
retracting my former concession, that the texts appealed to, as
commanding or authorizing Infant Baptism, are all without exception
made to bear a sense neither contained nor deducible: and likewise
that (historically considered) there exists no sufficient positive
evidence, that the Baptism of infants was instituted by the Apostles
in the practice of the Apostolic age.[150]
Lastly, we both coincide in the full conviction, that it is neither the
outward ceremony of Baptism, under any form or circumstances, nor
any other ceremony, but such a faith in Christ as tends to produce a
conformity to his holy doctrines and example in heart and life, and
which faith is itself a declared mean and condition of our partaking
of his spiritual body, and of being clothed upon with his
righteousness,—that properly makes us Christians, and can alone be
enjoined as an Article of Faith necessary to Salvation, so that the
denial thereof may be denounced as a damnable heresy. In the
strictest sense of essential, this alone is the essential in Christianity,
that the same spirit should be growing in us which was in the
fulness of all perfection in Christ Jesus. Whatever else is named
essential is such because, and only as far as, it is instrumental to
this, or evidently implied herein. If the Baptists hold the visible rite
to be indispensable to salvation, with what terror must they not
regard every disease that befalls their children between youth and
infancy! But if they are saved by the faith of the parent, then the
outward rite is not essential to salvation, otherwise than as the
omission should arise from a spirit of disobedience: and in this case
it is the cause, not the effect, the wilful and unbaptized heart, not
the unbaptizing hand, that perils it. And surely it looks very like an
inconsistency to admit the vicarious faith of the parents and the
therein implied promise, that the child shall be Christianly bred up,
and as much as in them lies prepared for the communion of saints—
to admit this, as safe and sufficient in their own instance, and yet to
denounce the same belief and practice as hazardous and unavailing
in the Church—the same, I say, essentially, and only differing from
their own by the presence of two or three Christian friends as
additional securities, and by the promise being expressed!
But you, my filial friend! have studied Christ under a better
teacher—the Spirit of Adoption, even the spirit that was in Paul, and
which still speaks to us out of his writings. You remember and
admire the saying of an old divine, that a ceremony duly instituted
was a Chain of Gold round the Neck of Faith; but if in the wish to
make it co-essential and consubstantial, you draw it closer and
closer, it may strangle the Faith it was meant to deck and designate.
You are not so unretentive a scholar as to have forgotten the pateris
et auro of your Virgil: or if you were, you are not so inconsistent a
reasoner, as to translate the Hebraism, spirit and fire in one place by
spiritual fire, and yet to refuse to translate water and spirit by
spiritual water in another place: or if, as I myself think, the different
position marks a different sense, yet that the former must be
ejusdem generis with the latter—the Water of Repentance,
reformation in conduct; and the Spirit that which purifies the inmost
principle of action, as fire purges the metal substantially and not
cleansing the surface only!
But in this instance, it will be said, the ceremony, the outward and
visible sign, is a Scripture ordinance. I will not reply, that the Romish
priest says the same of the anointing of the sick with oil and the
imposition of hands. No, my answer is: that this is a very sufficient
reason for the continued observance of a ceremonial rite so derived
and sanctioned, even though its own beauty, simplicity, and natural
significancy had pleaded less strongly in its behalf. But it is no
reason why the Church should forget, that the perpetuation of a
thing does not alter the nature of the thing, and that a ceremony to
be perpetuated is to be perpetuated as a ceremony. It is no reason
why, knowing and experiencing even in the majority of her own
members the proneness of the human mind to[151] superstition, the
Church might not rightfully and piously adopt the measures best
calculated to check this tendency, and to correct the abuse, to which
it had led in any particular rite. But of superstitious notions
respecting the baptismal ceremony, and of abuse resulting, the
instances were flagrant and notorious. Such, for instance, was the
frequent deferring of the baptismal rite to a late period of life, and
even to the death-bed, in the belief that the mystic water would
cleanse the baptized person from all sin and (if he died immediately
after the performance of the ceremony) send him pure and spotless
into the other world.
Nor is this all. The preventive remedy applied by the Church is
legitimated as well as additionally recommended by the following
consideration. Where a ceremony answered and was intended to
answer several purposes, which purposes at its first institution were
blended in respect of the time, but which afterwards, by change of
circumstances (as when, for instance, a large and ever-increasing
proportion of the members of the Church, or those who at least bore
the Christian name, were of Christian parents), were necessarily dis-
united—then either the Church has no power or authority delegated
to her (which is shifting the ground of controversy)—or she must be
authorized to choose and determine, to which of the several
purposes the ceremony should be attached.—Now one of the
purposes of Baptism was—the making it publicly manifest, first, what
individuals were to be regarded by the world (Phil. ii. 15.) as
belonging to the visible communion of Christians: inasmuch as by
their demeanour and apparent condition, the general estimation of
the city set on a hill and not to be hid (Matth. v. 14.) could not but
be affected—the city that even in the midst of a crooked and
perverse nation was bound not only to give no cause, but by all
innocent means to prevent every occasion, of rebuke. Secondly, to
mark out, for the Church itself, those that were entitled to that
especial dearness, that watchful and disciplinary love and loving-
kindness, which over and above the affections and duties of
philanthropy and universal charity, Christ himself had enjoined, and
with an emphasis and in a form significant of its great and especial
importance,—A New Commandment I give unto you, that ye love
one another. By a charity wide as sunshine, and comprehending the
whole human race, the body of Christians was to be placed in
contrast with the proverbial misanthropy and bigotry of the Jewish
Church and people: while yet they were to be distinguished and
known to all men, by the peculiar love and affection displayed by
them towards the members of their own community; thus exhibiting
the intensity of sectarian attachment, yet by the no less notorious
and exemplary practice of the duties of universal benevolence,
secured from the charge so commonly brought against it, of being
narrow and exclusive. "How kind these Christians are to the poor
and afflicted, without distinction of religion or country; but how they
love each other!"
Now combine with this the consideration before urged—the duty, I
mean, and necessity of checking the superstitious abuse of the
baptismal rite: and I then ask, with confidence, in what way could
the Church have exercised a sound discretion more wisely, piously,
or effectively, than by fixing, from among the several ends and
purposes of Baptism, the outward ceremony to the purposes here
mentioned? How could the great body of Christians be more plainly
instructed as to the true nature of all outward ordinances? What can
be conceived better calculated to prevent the ceremony from being
regarded as other and more than a ceremony, if not the
administration of the same on an object, (yea, a dear and precious
object) of spiritual duties, though the conscious subject of spiritual
operations and graces only by anticipation and in hope;—a subject
unconscious as a flower of the dew falling on it, or the early rain,
and thus emblematic of the myriads who (as in our Indian empire,
and henceforward, I trust, in Africa) are temporally and even morally
benefited by the outward existence of Christianity, though as yet
ignorant of its saving truth! And yet, on the other hand, what more
reverential than the application of this, the common initiatory rite of
the East sanctioned and appropriated by Christ—its application, I
say, to the very subjects, whom he himself commanded to be
brought to him—the children in arms, respecting whom Jesus was
much displeased with his disciples, who had rebuked those that
brought them! What more expressive of the true character of that
originant yet generic stain, from which the Son of God, by his
mysterious incarnation and agony and death and resurrection, and
by the Baptism of the Spirit, came to cleanse the children of Adam,
than the exhibition of the outward element to infants free from and
incapable of crime, in whom the evil principle was present only as
potential being, and whose outward semblance represented the
kingdom of Heaven? And can it—to a man, who would hold himself
deserving of anathema maranatha (1 Cor. xvi. 22.) if he did not love
the Lord Jesus—can it be nothing to such a man, that the
introduction and commendation of a new inmate, a new spiritual
ward, to the assembled brethren in Christ (—and this, as I have
shown above, was one purpose of the baptismal ceremony) does in
the baptism of an infant recall our Lord's own presentation in the
Temple on the eighth day after his birth? Add to all these
considerations the known fact of the frequent exposure and the
general light regard of infants, at the time when Infant Baptism is by
the Baptists supposed to have been first ruled by the Catholic
Church, not overlooking the humane and charitable motives, that
influenced Cyprian's decision in its favour. And then make present to
your imagination, and meditatively contemplate the still continuing
tendency, the profitable, the beautiful effects, of this ordinance now
and for so many centuries back, on the great mass of the population
throughout Christendom—the softening, elevating exercise of faith
and the conquest over the senses, while in the form of a helpless
crying babe the presence, and the unutterable worth and value, of
an immortal being made capable of everlasting bliss are solemnly
proclaimed and carried home to the mind and heart of the hearers
and beholders! Nor will you forget the probable influence on the
future education of the child, the opportunity of instructing and
impressing the friends, relatives, and parents in their best and most
docile mood. These are, indeed, the mollia tempora fandi.
It is true, that by an unforeseen accident, and through the
propensity of all zealots to caricature partial truth into total
falsehood—it is too true, that a tree the very contrary in quality of
that shown to Moses (Exod. xv. 25.) was afterwards cast into the
sweet waters from this fountain, and made them like the waters of
Marah, too bitter to be drunk. I allude to the Pelagian controversy,
the perversion of the article of Original Sin by Augustine, and the
frightful conclusions which this durus pater infantum drew from the
article thus perverted. It is not, however, to the predecessors of this
African, whoever they were that authorized Pædo-baptism, and at
whatever period it first became general—it is not to the Church at
the time being, that these consequences are justly imputable. She
had done her best to preclude every superstition, by allowing in
urgent cases any and every adult, man and woman, to administer
the ceremonial part, the outward rite, of baptism: but reserving to
the highest functionary of the Church (even to the exclusion of the
co-presbyters) the more proper and spiritual purpose, namely, the
declaration of repentance and belief, the free Choice of Christ, as his
Lord, and the open profession of the Christian title by an individual
in his own name and by his own deliberate act. This office of
religion, the essentially moral and spiritual nature of which could not
be mistaken, this most solemn office the Bishop alone was to
perform.
Thus—as soon as the purposes of the ceremonial rite were by
change of circumstances divided, that is, took place at different
periods of the believer's life—to the outward purposes, where the
effect was to be produced on the consciousness of others, the
Church continued to affix the outward rite; while to the substantial
and spiritual purpose, where the effect was to be produced on the
individual's own mind, she gave its beseeming dignity by an
ordinance not figurative, but standing in the direct cause and
relation of means to the end.
In fine, there are two great purposes to be answered, each having
its own subordinate purposes, and desirable consequences. The
Church answers both, the Baptists one only. If, nevertheless, you
would still prefer the union of the Baptismal rite with the
Confirmation, and that the Presentation of Infants to the assembled
Church had formed a separate institution, avowedly prospective—I
answer: first, that such for a long time and to a late period was my
own judgment. But even then it seemed to me a point, as to which
an indifference would be less inconsistent in a lover of truth, than a
zeal to separation in a professed lover of peace. And secondly, I
would revert to the history of the Reformation, and the calamitous
accident of the Peasants' War: when the poor ignorant multitude,
driven frantic by the intolerable oppressions of their feudal lords,
rehearsed all the outrages that were acted in our own times by the
Parisian populace headed by Danton, Marat, and Robespierre; and
on the same outrageous principles, and in assertion of the same
Rights of Brutes to the subversion of all the Duties of Men. In our
times, most fortunately for the interest of religion and morality, or of
their prudential substitutes at least, the name of Jacobin was every
where associated with that of Atheist and Infidel. Or rather,
Jacobinism and Infidelity were the two heads of the Revolutionary
Geryon—connatural misgrowths of the same monster-trunk. In the
German Convulsion, on the contrary, by a mere but most
unfortunate accident, the same code of Caliban jurisprudence, the
same sensual and murderous excesses, were connected with the
name of Anabaptist. The abolition of magistracy, community of
goods, the right of plunder, polygamy, and whatever else was
fanatical were comprised in the word, Anabaptism. It is not to be
imagined, that the Fathers of the Reformation could, without a
miraculous influence, have taken up the question of Infant Baptism
with the requisite calmness and freedom of spirit. It is not to be
wished, that they should have entered on the discussion. Nay, I will
go farther. Unless the abolition of Infant Baptism can be shown to be
involved in some fundamental article of faith, unless the practice
could be proved fatal or imminently perilous to salvation, the
Reformers would not have been justified in exposing the yet tender
and struggling cause of Protestantism to such certain and violent
prejudices as this innovation would have excited. Nothing less than
the whole substance and efficacy of the Gospel faith was the prize,
which they had wrestled for and won; but won from enemies still in
the field, and on the watch to retake, at all costs, the sacred
treasure, and consign it once again to darkness and oblivion. If there
be a time for all things, this was not the time for an innovation, that
would and must have been followed by the triumph of the enemies
of Scriptural Christianity, and the alienation of the governments, that
had espoused and protected it.
Remember, I say this on the supposition of the question's not
being what you do not pretend it to be, an essential of the Faith, by
which we are saved. But should it likewise be conceded, that it is a
disputable point—and that in point of fact it is and has been
disputed by divines, whom no pious Christian of any denomination
will deny to have been faithful and eminent servants of Christ;
should it, I say, be likewise conceded that the question of Infant
Baptism is a point, on which two Christians, who perhaps differ on
this point only, may differ without giving just ground for impeaching
the piety or competence of either—in this case I am obliged to infer,
that the person who at any time can regard this difference as singly
warranting a separation from a religious Community, must think of
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