Apostasy

a deserting or abandoning of the true religion. The word is borrowed from the Latin _apostatare_, or _apostare_, _to despise_ or _violate_ any thing. Hence _apostatare leges_ anciently signified _to transgress the laws_. The Latin _apostatare_, again, comes from ἀπὸ, _from_, and ἳϛημι, _I stand_. Among the Romanists, apostasy also signifies the forsaking of a religious order, whereof a man had made profession, without a lawful dispensation. The ancients distinguished three kinds of apostasy: the first, _a supererogatione_, is committed by a priest, or religious, who abandons his profession, and returns to his lay state; the second, _a mandatis Dei_, by a person of any condition, who abandons the commands of God, though he retains his faith; the third, _a fide_, by him who not only abandons his works, but also the faith. There is this difference between an apostate and a heretic; that the latter only abandons a part of the faith, whereas the former renounces the whole. The primitive Christian church distinguished several kinds of apostasy. The first was that of those who relapsed from Christianity into Judaism; the second, that of those who blended Judaism and Christianity together; and the third was that of those who, after having been Christians, voluntarily relapsed into Paganism.