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. APOSTLE, ἀπόϛολος, one of the twelve disciples of Jesus Christ, commissioned by him to preach his Gospel, and propagate it to all parts of the earth. The word originally signifies a person _delegated_ or _sent_; from ἀποϛέλλω, _mitto_; in which sense it occurs in Herodotus, and other profane authors. Hence, in the New Testament, the term is applied to divers sorts of delegates; and to the twelve disciples by way of eminence. They were limited to the number twelve, in allusion to the twelve tribes of Israel. See Matt. xix, 28; Luke xxii, 30; Rev. xxi, 12–14; and compare Exod. xxiv, 4; Deut. i, 23; and Josh. iv, 2, 3. Accordingly care was taken, on the death of Judas, to choose another, to make up the number, Acts i, 21, 22, 26. Of the first selection and commission of the twelve Apostles, we have an account, Luke vi, 13, &c; Matt. x, 1, &c. Having chosen and constituted twelve persons, under the name of Apostles, our blessed Lord determined that for some time they should be continually with him, not only to attend upon his public ministry, but to enjoy the benefit of his private conversation, that he might furnish them the better for the great work in which they were to be employed; and that, at length, after suitable preparation, he might, with greater advantage, send them abroad to preach his Gospel, and thus make way for his own visits to some more distant parts, where he had not yet been; and to enable them more effectually to do this, he endowed them with the power of working miracles, of curing diseases, and casting out demons. About the commencement of the third year of his ministry,