Study Guide

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Book 4, Chapter 28

By Laurence Sterne

Book 4, Chapter 28

Alrighty, back to the question of baptism. Before the Reformation, Didius says, re-baptizing would have been easy. Since priests were so bad at Latin, they could just find an error in the ceremony and declare it invalid.
Others say that the mistake only matters if it's in the root and not the end of a word; others think that, as long as the priest's intentions were good, the ceremony was valid.
The company debates this fascinating question for a while, and Mr. Shandy soaks it in like a sponge.