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  1. Dec 2020
    1. Hardly had the Father ended Mass, and the Christians—who, according to their custom, had filled the Church after the rising of the [9] Sun—were still continuing their devotions there, when the cry arose, " To arms! and repel the enemy! "—who, having come unexpectedly, had made his approaches by night. Some hasten to the combat, others to flight: there is naught but alarm and terror everywhere. The Father, among the first to rush where he sees the danger greatest, encourages his people to a brave defense; and—as if he had seen Paradise open for the Christians, and Hell on the point of swallowing up all the Infidels—he speaks to them in a tone so [page 87] animated with the spirit which was possessing him, that, having made a breach in hearts which till then had been most rebellious, he gave them a Christian heart. The number of these proved to be so great that, unable to cope with it by baptizing them one after the other, he was constrained to dip his handkerchief in the water (which was all that necessity then offered him), in order to shed abroad as quickly as possible this grace on those poor Savages, who cried mercy to him,—using the manner of baptizing which is called " by aspersion."

      So...he dipped his handkerchief in water so that he could baptize people "quicker???"