Apostasy

[Gr. a post as is, from, apo, from, and his temi, to stand.] The abandonment of any system of thinking or acting, good or bad; but the word is generally used in a reproachful sense, of one who has changed his religious opinions. What one party calls apostasy is termed by the other conversion. ( Hist . ) History mentions three eminent apostates; Julian the apostate, who had never been a Christian except nominally and by compulsion; Henry IV., king of France, who thought that " Paris vaut bien une me e;" and William of Na au, the Stadtholder, who separated himself from the Catholic church, and became a Protestant.