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

  • 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.