—Now, quoth Didius , rising up, and laying his right hand with his fingers spread upon his breast⸺had such a blunder about a christian-name happened before the Reformation⸻[It happened the day before yesterday, quoth my uncle Toby to himself] and when baptism was administer’d in Latin —[’Twas all in English , said my uncle]⸻many things might have coincided with it, and upon the authority of sundry decreed cases, to have pronounced the baptism null, with a power of giving the child a new name—Had a priest, for instance, which was no uncommon thing, through ignorance of the Latin tongue, baptized a child of Tom-o’Stiles, in nomine patriae & filia & spiritum sanctos —the baptism was held null.⸺I beg your pardon, replied Kysarcius ⸺in that case, as the mistake was only the terminations , the baptism was valid⸺and to have rendered it null, the blunder of the priest should have fallen upon the first syllable of each noun⸻and not, as in your case, upon the last.
My father delighted in subtleties of this kind, and listen’d with infinite attention.
Gastripheres , for example, continued Kysarcius , baptizes a child of John Stradling’s in Gomine gatris, etc. , etc. , instead of in Nomine patris, etc. ⸺Is this a baptism? No—say the ablest canonists; in as much as the radix of each word is hereby torn up, and the sense and meaning of them removed and changed quite to another object; for Gomine does not signify a name, nor gatris a father.—What do they signify? said my uncle Toby .—Nothing at all⸻quoth Yorick .⸺Ergo, such a baptism is null, said Kysarcius .⸺
In course, answered Yorick , in a tone two parts jest and one part earnest.⸺