[ckilmer]

Quote: “Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!” deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the baptismal blood.

Author: Melville, Herman

Categories: Satanism; baptism

Attribution: Herman Melville (1819–1891), U.S. author. Moby-Dick (1851), The Writings of Herman Melville, vol. 6, eds. Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle (1988).

Ahab to his harpoon (”I baptize thee, not in the name of the father, but in the name of the devil.”

[Sam Hill]

I'm not sure what you think the significance of that quote is.

Melville didn't like Christianity -- or any religion much. He thought religion had brought about a lot of inequity in the world, based on what he had seen in his travels.

Ahab undoubtedly was meant to express a lot of Melville's rants against God.

But Ishmael called Ahab insane. So Melville was at least conflicted.

(He's in many ways the obverse of Dostoevsky.)

None of this speaks to his belief or doubts about the trinity or the Arien Heresy.