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Apostasy

noun
(pl. apostasies)
1.
The state of having rejected your religious beliefs or your political party or a cause (often in favor of opposing beliefs or causes).  Synonyms: defection, renunciation.
2.
The act of abandoning a party for cause.  Synonym: tergiversation.






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"Apostasy" Quotes from Famous Books



... redaction assigns the national misfortunes to idolatry, though only once is idolatry mentioned with reprobation in the ancient stories themselves, vi. 25-32. The redaction shows a further indifference to history in giving a national[2] turn to the tale of apostasy and deliverance, whereas the original stories show that the interests are really not as yet national, but only tribal. The chronology of the book—which is also part of the redaction—with its round numbers, 20, ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... to Principal Baillie, 19th March 1649, Mr. Spang mentions that he was admitted to an audience by the Prince of Orange at the Hague. Something was said by the Prince, which led Mr. Spang to suspect he alluded to Montrose. "I hoped," says Mr. Spang, "his Highness did not mean of that man, whose apostasy, perjuries, and unheard of cruelty, had made him so odious, in all our country, that they could not hear of his name." He presently gave me to understand he meant not him or any such, for by the comportment of our Scottish noblemen at court now, he perceives how odious James ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... cart, While faring South, to learn the driver's art, Or, in white neckcloth, soothe with pious aim The graceful sorrows of some languid dame, Who, from the wreck of her bereavement, saves The double charm of widowhood and slaves Pliant and apt, they lose no chance to show To what base depths apostasy can go; Outdo the natives in their readiness To roast a negro, or to mob a press; Poise a tarred schoolmate on the lyncher's rail, Or make a ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... realize," he cried. "If it were known that I so much as contemplated this, the Holy Office would account it clear proof of apostasy, and send me to ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... modern criticism of the Bible started. This criticism has constantly been growing, until everywhere throughout Christendom an infallible Bible is being denied. Thus the foundations of the faith have been undermined, and the way is prepared for the final apostasy, the complete ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein

... this splendor, and enervated by luxury, Solomon forgot his higher duties, and yielded to the fascination of oriental courts. In his harem were 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines, who turned his heart to idolatry. In punishment for his apostasy, God declared that his kingdom should be divided, and that his son should reign only over the single tribe of Judah, which was spared him for the sake of his father David. In his latter days he was ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... Further, it is written (Ecclus. 10:14): "The beginning of the pride of man is apostasy [Douay: 'to fall off'] from God." But apostasy from God is a sin. Therefore another sin is the beginning of pride, so that the latter is not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... publication of the sermons, and who doubtless had induced him to preach them, immediately made him Rector of Stamford Parish, soon appointed him Dean of Worcester, and finally in 1645 made him Bishop of St. David's. A few years ago such clerical apostasy would seem astonishing to an American. But now, Gentlemen of the Jury, so rapid has been the downfall of public virtue, that men filling the pulpits once graced and dignified by noblest puritanic piety, now publicly declare there is no law of God above the fugitive slave bill. ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... ecclesiastic to under-estimate professional success in the Church of Rome. The career of a Cardinal Newman, for example, was one that challenged his respect, however much he regretted the loss of such talents to the Anglican faith, however forcibly he might characterise the convert's action as apostasy. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... word lashed her with its irony—one does not strike an attitude when one is fighting for life! She would threaten, grovel, cajole... she would yield anything to keep her hold on happiness. Ah, but the difficulty lay deeper! The law could not help her—her own apostasy could not help her. She was the victim of the theories she renounced. It was as though some giant machine of her own making had caught her up in its wheels and ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... Obedient to that religion which commands us to kiss the rod with which the punishment is inflicted, she praised her husband, and publicly approved him. But in the confessional, or at night, when praying, she wept often, imploring God's forgiveness for the apostasy of the man who thought the contrary of what he professed, and who desired the destruction of the aristocracy and the Church,—the two religions of ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac

... have been in his way a Christian Hercules, and well adapted for cleansing even an Augean stable of apostasy.] ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... son and brother, should be breaking bread and living on a footing of perfect equality with these villagers he knew would have been, in their eyes, an offense only second in heinousness to that of his apostasy. ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin

... when we see it continually dishonored and trampled on by heretics and modern pagans, in their scramble for money and pleasures. On the other hand, the poverty, humiliation, and rags of old Erin, of the kings, saints, and martyrs, scandalize us; and from these two false notions the degradation and apostasy of many Irishmen commence. Hence they no sooner land on the shores of America than they endeavor to clip the musical and rich brogue of fatherland, to make room for the bastard barbarisms and vulgar ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... the Woman. She "was a sinner." This is all, in fact, that we know of her; but this is enough. The term "sinner," in this instance, as in many others, does not refer to the general apostasy in Adam; it is distinctive of race and habit. She was probably of heathen extraction, as she was certainly of a dissolute life. The poetry of sin and shame calls her the Magdalen, and there may be a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... incurred the supposed guilt of an unnatural and unpardonable offence. They dissolved the sacred ties of custom and education, violated the religious institutions of their country, and presumptuously despised whatever their fathers had believed as true, or had reverenced as sacred. Nor was this apostasy (if we may use the expression) merely of a partial or local kind; since the pious deserter who withdrew himself from the temples of Egypt or Syria, would equally disdain to seek an asylum in those of Athens or Carthage. Every Christian rejected with contempt the superstitions ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... incurring any expense. He ascertained that the Neapolitan was passionately in love with a Mohammedan girl named Nekibi, who returned his affection. Acting under Ali's orders, Tahir Abbas accused the woman before the cadi of sacrilegious intercourse with an infidel. She could only escape death by the apostasy of her lover; if he refused to deny his God, he shared her fate, and both would perish at the stake. Caretto refused to renounce his religion, but only Nekibi suffered death. Caretto was withdrawn from execution, and Ali kept him concealed ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... when making her choice, she finds herself plunged for life into the most galling and irremediable of human sorrows—secret domestic persecution. Few brave the trial; the largest number go with the current to the greater evil of apostasy. ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... had arrived from Persia only a few hours before. This was on the Tuesday. The following Sunday, July 14th, Mr. Keble preached the assize Sermon in the University Pulpit. It was published under the title of "National Apostasy." I have ever considered and kept the day, as the start of ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... race under all the aggravated curses of the law weighing on them; or that the obstinacy of their adherence to their dividuating institutes in persecution, dispersion, and shame, should be in direct proportion to the wantonness of their apostasy from the same in union ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... "Previous to 1817, several popular and ardent ministers in the kingdom of Wuertemberg maintained, in commentaries on the Apocalypse and other publications, that the wished-for period would commence in 1836, and would be preceded by a dreadful apostasy and great persecutions. These views, in addition to the fascinating interest always connected with prophetical theories, being enforced with much pious feeling, acquired so great credit as to be adopted by nearly all the religious people in the kingdom, and by many others. At the same time, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

... my dear fellow—only the ravens don't always find out their address! Speaking of ravens, though, Kate told me she saw old Shepson coming out of your place—I say, old man, you're not meditating an apostasy? You're not doing the kind of thing ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... benefice on which he supported himself and an aged mother, and to repair to Gibraltar for the purpose of receiving Christian instruction under Mr. Rule. After remaining some time at that place, where, Mr. R. informs me, his conduct was in most points exemplary, he returned to Valencia, where his apostasy, as the Papists termed it, having become known, his salary of six pesetas daily was sequestrated, and himself and his parent in consequence deprived of their only means of subsistence. But this is not all. The aid and assistance which he had been led to expect from England were withheld ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... oath of immitigable vengeance. Pursuits, escapes, the camp, the battle-field, the prison, the court made up no small part of his life of vicissitude and of unalterable resolve. He roused Henri of Navarre from the lethargy of pleasure; he warned the King against the crime of apostasy; he dreaded the mass, but could cheerfully have accepted the stake. Extreme in his rage of party, he yet in private affairs could show good sense and generosity. His elder years were darkened by what he regarded as treason in his King, and by the falling away from the faith ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... Punishment, with as much serene gravity as that with which he had made himself the derision of the civilised world in other matters, saying that though human life was holy, human virtue was more holy still; and he had added to the crime of murder, the crimes of adultery, idolatry and apostasy, for which this punishment was theoretically sanctioned. There had not been, however, more than two such executions in the eight years of his reign, since criminals, of course, with the exception of devoted believers, instantly made their ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... who hated the very name of reform. Even a reduction in the monstrous number of Irish Bishoprics pertaining to the establishment was indignantly denounced as sacrilege, and was the immediate cause of Keble's sermon on National Apostasy to which the famous "movement" has been traced. John Henry Newman was at that time residing in Oriel, not as a tutor, but as Vicar of St. Mary's. He was kind to Froude for Hurrell's sake, and introduced him to the reading set. The fascination ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... Christian. But he failed in the hour of trial—failed through being dominated by an inordinate love of the world—and his memory survives, therefore, as a representative of that worldly-mindedness which leads to apostasy. ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.

... the whole constitution of the Grand Apostasy, involving innumerable forms of abuse and abomination, to which our object does not require any allusion, how sad a spectacle is held forth of the people destroyed for lack of knowledge. If, as one of their plagues, an inferior one ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... did not suffer in reputation from this sad apostasy on the part of the head-master; on the contrary, it seemed more natural and English,—less outlandish and heretical. And it was at the zenith of its renown when, one bright morning, with all my clothes nicely mended, and a large plum-cake ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... believe that God appeared to Moses and Samuel and told them the very words to write down, and showed them visions; and isn't He the same God yesterday, to-day, and for ever? It's just what it says in the Bible shall come about in the latter days. It's because of the great apostasy of the Church, no one really believing in Jesus Christ, that a new ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... monarchy and a hereditary senate and presidency; with the greatest inconsistency, because, in 1787, he had written and published in London an excellent "Defence of the American Constitution;" and with political heresy, if not actual apostasy, because of that inconsistency. Twenty years later, when speaking of these essays, Mr. Adams said: "This dull, heavy volume still excites the wonder of its author—first, that he could find, amid the constant ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... the gift of pastors, teachers, etc. Herein lies the value of church attendance—it promotes growth; failure to attend leads to apostasy (Heb. 10:25-28), cf. 1 ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans

... friend. Oh! my poor Dominic, perhaps I have been overattached to you and this comes as a judgment. It would be hard enough to have anything break up our friendship, but this folly, this dreadful doting apostasy—" ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... endeavoured to laugh off with a good grace his apostasy from the popular party; and whilst he could laugh at the head of a plentiful table, he could not fail to find many who would laugh with him; but there was a strong party formed against him in the county. Two other candidates were his competitors; one of them was Counsellor Quin, a man of vulgar ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... exclaimed, "why hast thou, Oh God! thus dealt with us? Why hast thou snatched from our sight this glorious saint, whose merits, if properly applied, doubtless would have been sufficient to atone for the apostasy of St. Peter, the opposition of St. Paul (previous to his conversion), and even the treachery of Judas himself? Why hast thou, Oh God! snatched him from us?"—and a deep and hollow voice from among ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... Buchanan,—illustrating afresh the contradiction that the party declaiming most loudly against Executive power has constantly abused it. Mr. Tyler and Mr. Johnson were both chosen by the opponents of the Democracy, but they were both reared in that school, and both returned to it—exhibiting in their apostasy the readiness with which the Democratic mind turns to the tyranny of ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... enters the door of a saloon because the mind is not sufficiently trained to issue wise orders. The mind was befuddled before the body became so, and the body becomes so only because the mind commands. Intoxication, primarily, is a mental apostasy, and the body cannot do otherwise than obey. If the mind were intent upon securing a book at the library, the body would not have seen the door of the saloon, but would have been urgent to reach the library. There is neither fiction nor facetiousness in the adage, "An idle ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... population, and especially of the women and children. But from the very first the German policy has been to utterly ignore the rights of non- combatants, tearing up the conventions which they themselves had signed for their protection. No Government could be expected to be prepared for such a total apostasy from the elementary principles of civilized society, or to anticipate methods at which a Zulu might blush. If they had done so, it should have been their first care to remove all non-combatants from the ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar

... therefore superficial, and partly because it represents a direction of thought which eyed the later work of Ibsen and Bjornson with distrust. These men had rejected the faith of their fathers, and the books that came from them were signs of the apostasy. But For Kirke og Kultur has been marked from its first number by ability, conspicuous fairness, and a large catholicity, which give it an honorable place among church journals. And not even a fanatical admirer of Ibsen will deny that there ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud

... anything I could say. Fretted and ashamed of myself, I hurried from the house, and, returning home, rushed to my room, fell upon my knees, and implored my Father to inflict at once the punishment due to lukewarmness and apostasy. How vain had been all my previous desire to distinguish myself—how arrogant my pretensions—how inefficient my weak attempts! I was not worthy of the commission with which I had been invested, and I besought ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... Philip felt over the apostasy of Maurice overshadowed for a time every other feeling. He sorrowed for his friend, praying and yearning, searching his heart to discover whether his own influence or example had helped to bring ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... journey upon so doubtful an errand. But those can be found, bold and faithful, who for that ample reward with which you could so easily enrich them, would venture even into the heart of Ecbatana itself, and bring you back your brother alive, or advertise you of his apostasy or death.' ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... decide, and declare, that thou, Gilles de Rais, cited unto our Tribunal, art heinously guilty of heresy, apostasy, and evocation of demons; that for these crimes thou hast incurred the sentence of excommunication and all other penalties ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... 'there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.' No diminutive Messiah can meet the religious need of the world today and throughout the centuries. Christ for all and forever, is the slogan of the church. There has been apostasy in every age; attacks upon Christianity have been disguised under cloaks of many kinds, but it has withstood them all—'The hammers are shattered but the anvil remains.' The church will not yield now; it will continue its defense of the Bible, ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams

... needs of his soul, and he found himself summoned to join the Church of England as by law established. Religious intolerance not being a family characteristic, Mr. Barmby and his daughters, though they looked grave over the young man's apostasy, admitted his freedom in this matter; their respected friend Mr. Lord belonged to the Church, and it could not be thought that so earnest-minded a man walked in the way to perdition. At the same time, Samuel began to exhibit a liking for social pleasures, which were, it might be hoped, ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... Richard had clung to the cause of Charles I, had lost his entire fortune, and in the end was forced to bend his neck to the yoke of Cromwell to save his life. When Charles II returned to the throne, he easily forgave Sir Richard his enforced apostasy, but failed to return his estates, forgiveness being so much easier than restitution to an ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major

... There had been times, in the last year, especially, when he had thought coldly of the disciple's calling and was minded to break away and be a skilled craftsman, like his father. Now he was aghast to think that he had ever been so near the brink of apostasy. With the river of the Water of Life springing crystal clear at his feet, should he turn away and drink from the bitter pools in the wilderness of this world? With prophetic eye he saw himself as another Boanerges, lifting, with all ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... instance, to address themselves to one of the presbyters appointed for their special examination. The business of this functionary, who was known by the designation of the Penitentiary [496:1] was to hear the confessions of the penitents, to ascertain the extent and circumstances of their apostasy, and to announce the penance required from each by the existing ecclesiastical regulations. The disclosures made to the Penitentiary did not supersede the necessity of public confession; it was simply the duty of this minister to give to the lapsed such instructions as his ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... thou weep, entreat, complain To Love, as I did once to thee: When all thy tears shall be as vain As mine were then: for thou shalt be Damned for thy false Apostasy. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... climbing step by step; sometimes fainting—sometimes stumbling—sometimes falling, but ever rising with renewed strength up the steep and narrow way of Calvary. Her uncle's distrustful manner—his harsh language—his angry looks, with Helen's apparent apostasy, and haughty demeanor, were trials which required the constant replenishing of grace in her soul, to bear with patience. But Father Fabian bid her to be of good cheer; the divine sacraments of the Church strengthened and consoled her by their sweet and mighty ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey

... the chances to which, in spite of ourselves, we are subject, play only too large a part in what brings salvation to men, or removes it from them. Let us imagine twin Polish children, the one taken by the Tartars, sold to the Turks, brought to apostasy, plunged in impiety, dying in despair; the other saved by some chance, falling then into good hands to be educated properly, permeated by the soundest truths of religion, exercised in the virtues that it commends to us, dying with all the feelings of a good Christian. One will lament the ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... about the telegram. She feared it. Her superstitiousness was awakened. She thought of her apostasy from Catholicism to Protestantism. She thought of a Holy Virgin angered. And throughout the evening and throughout the night, amid her smiles and teasings and coaxings and caresses and ecstasies and all her accomplished, voluptuous girlishness, the image of a resentful ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... God's servant, specially selected to perform a particularly nasty job. Therefore Judas, ever faithful, a betrayer only by divine command, was a saint. Ergo, he, Abel Ah Yo, was a saint by very virtue of his apostasy to a particular sect, and he could have access with clear grace ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London

... natural elegance. We shall soon polish her. His Royal Highness is so anxious that every attention should be paid to her. Beckendorff, you know, is a man of the greatest genius." (Madame Carolina had lowered her tone about the Minister since the Prince of Little Lilliput's apostasy.) "The country is greatly indebted to him. This, between ourselves, is his daughter. At least I have no doubt of it. Beckendorff was once married, to a lady of great rank, died early, beautiful woman, very interesting! His Royal ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... not deny that Indulgences have been abused; but are not the most sacred things liable to be perverted? This is a proper place to refer briefly to the Bull of Pope Leo X. proclaiming the Indulgence which afforded Luther a pretext for his apostasy. Leo determined to bring to completion the magnificent Church of St. Peter, commenced by his predecessor, Julius II. With that view he issued a Bull promulgating an Indulgence to such as would contribute some voluntary ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... born, cruel, and covetous, was an Arian, and could not lose the opportunity of making converts. He sent theologians to meet Ulfilas, and torment him into Arianism. When he arrived, Valens tormented him himself. While the Goths starved he argued, apostasy was the absolute condition of his help, till Ulfilas, in a weak moment, gave his word that the Goths should become Arians, if Valens would give them lands on the South bank of the Danube. Then they would be the Emperor's ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... Except apostasy, there was no other resource than the hazardous and painful one of voluntary banishment, and this she without hesitation adopted. Bertie first obtained license for quitting the country on some pretended ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... that I had a mission. I reached England on July 9, and on July 14 Mr. Keble preached in the university pulpit on "National Apostasy." This day was the start of the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... to the compromise measures, but the Kentuckian rose higher than his section and his look was forward; while Webster was distinctly below the characteristic temper of New England, and his movement was retrograde. The anti-slavery men mourned his 7th of March speech as a great apostasy, and Whittier branded it in his poem of "Ichabod," which fell with Judgment-day weight. Yet it was not an apostasy, but the natural culmination of his course; and in spite of its error, he still was true ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... slavery in the State. President Buchanan urged Congress to admit Kansas with her bogus Constitution. Douglas, who would not sanction so base an injustice, opposed the measure, voting with the Republicans steadily against the admission. The Buchananists, outraged at what they called "Douglas's apostasy," broke with him. Then it was that a part of the Republican party, notably Horace Greeley at the head of the New York "Tribune," struck by the boldness and nobility of Douglas's opposition, began to hope to win him over from the Democrats to the Republicans. ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... which the haughty rebels had left vacant, high in heaven. Therefore Holy God willed by his plenteous power that under the circle of the firma- ment the earth should be established, with sky above and 100 wide water, a world-creation in place of the foes whom in their apostasy he ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous

... continues: "Evidently, the word 'fittest' as thus used is a figure of speech." Had the sun fallen from the heavens the shock to the followers of Darwin could not have been more stunning than this open apostasy from ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... child. Had he been a Protestant, or had he, though a Papist, been burthened with a large family of children, he would doubtless have pursued a different course. But to him, and, as he sincerely hoped, to his son, the strife after civil honors was sternly barred. Apostasy only could lay it open. And, as the sentiments of honor and duty in this point fell in with the vices of his temperament, high principle concurring with his constitutional love of ease, we need not wonder that he should early retire from commerce with a very moderate competence, or that ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... to him in a dream and asked him to give her name to Isabel, there was still the world. Though Jenny might understand, the world would think he had forgotten Jenny. The minority of faithful hearts would grow sadder by his seeming apostasy, and the cynic would strengthen his pessimism by one more illustration of human inconstancy. The world might hear that he was loving Isabel in some Aegean isle, and still deem him faithful; for grief is allowed mistresses, but with a wife it ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne

... if not very steadfast in the faith, finally yield to it, and, tired of numerous disputes in defense of religious rights, will become more and more indifferent, gradually give up the practice of religion, and probably terminate with complete loss of faith or apostasy from the true religion. We know that the children of Seth were good till they married the children of Cain, and then they also became wicked; for, remember, there is always more likelihood that the bad will pervert the good, than that the good will convert the bad. Besides the disputes ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead

... years after this, finding himself sovereign of his province, his head is spinning. Lesser events would have made it turn; his is only a twenty-eight-year-old head, not very solid, without any inside ballast,[32117] already disturbed by vanity, ambition, rancor, and apostasy, by the sudden and complete volteface which puts him in conflict with his past educational habits and most cherished affections: it breaks down under the vastness and novelty of this greatness.—In the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... members of CHRIST'S mystical body, together with the abounding of error, seems necessarily to require it as a proper mean, under the divine blessing, for gathering again the scattered flock of Christ, the chief shepherd, to the one sheepfold, and putting a stop to the current of prevailing apostasy and defection. ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery

... calling apostasy ought to have made me feel sincerely happy and fortunate; but for all that I have suffered keenly, because I knew quite well it would cause you ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen

... all. The patriarch Mar Shimon, who had long worn the guise of friendship, now threw off the mask. He broke up schools in small and distant villages, and secured the beating of a man by the governor on the charge of apostasy. The Female Seminary was honored with his special anathema. "Has Miss Fiske taught you this?" was his frequent demand of those who fell into his hands, followed by such reviling as only an ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary

... Raynal's letter, he disclaimed any intention of calling down the severity either of the Assembly or of public opinion upon a man who still preserved a great name; he thought that a sufficient excuse for the writer's apostasy might be found in his advanced age. The Assembly agreed with Robespierre, and passed to the order of ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... story of the Marny jewels: how he had put them safely away in the crypt of his little church, until the Assembly of the Convention had ordered the closing of the churches, and placed before every minister of le bon Dieu the alternative of apostasy or death. ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... him. He upsets a love-affair of his sister's, he quarrels with and insults her lover, who commits suicide; he also drives to self-destruction a wretched little Hebrew who has become a freethinker and can't stand the strain of his apostasy; he is the remote cause of another suicide, that of a weakling, a student full of "modern" ideas, but whose will is quite sapped. Turgenieff's Fathers and Sons is recalled more than once, especially the character of Bazarov, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... attitude of the whole mass of the nation towards Christ and His pretensions, is one of such a magnitude as we cannot, by any exercise of our imagination, realise. 'And,' says Christ, 'the only way by which you will ever get over the temptation to intellectual doubt or to cowardly apostasy that arises from your being thrown out of sympathy with the whole mass of your people, and the traditions of the generations, is to reflect that I told you it would be so, before it came ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... Clement VII.'s authority, a Benedictine; then putting off the monk's habit and assuming that of a secular priest in order to roam the world, "incurring," as he himself says, "in this vagabond life, the double stigma of suspension from orders and apostasy;" then studying medicine at Montpellier; then medical officer of the great hospital at Lyons, but, before long, superseded in that office "for having been twice absent without leave;" then staying at Lyons as a corrector of proofs, a compiler of almanacs, an editor of divers books ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... convictions, they may find abundant consolation in the fact that the principle is neither conceded, compromised, nor endangered by these bills. It is strengthened, not weakened by them, and will survive their present zeal and future apostasy." ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... Sahib," said the Englishman, naming a man who had been most bitter in rebuking him for his apostasy from the Teacup Creed. Dana Da ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... been taught to trust only to the grace of God to lead and preserve him in the way of life. He will begin to distrust the Gospel as a very inefficient instrument, and this will lead him to become indifferent to it, and finally fall away from it entirely. A real danger of apostasy and despair exists wherever the Roman dogma of man's natural free ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... not much to fear from a man like this. Michel Lorio was a living lesson against apostasy. As he went up and down the street, and in and out of the gate, his loneliness and dejection spoke more eloquently for the old faith than any banishment could have done. Michel was suffered to remain under ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various

... themselves a loophole—they could not sidle away into the opposite creed." He never, however, became a violent Tory partisan. It is singular how Johnson, with all his aversion to Akenside, has no allusion to his apostasy, in which we might have a priori expected him to glory, as a proof of the ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... right word for this conversion. It was an act of expediency such as other ambitious men found unavoidable in those days; but Heine performed it in a spirit of bitterness caused not so much by a sense of apostasy as by contempt for the conventional Christianity that he now embraced. There can be no sharper contrast than that presented by such a poem as The Pilgrimage to Kevlaar and sundry satirical pieces not included in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... that of Scotch presbyterians a century earlier, rendered it less and less fit, in the opinion of high Churchmen, to legislate for the Church of England, and every concession to religious liberty shocked them as a step towards "National Apostasy". This was, in fact, the impressive title of a sermon preached by John Keble, in July, 1833, before the university of Oxford. From this sermon Newman himself dated the origin of the Oxford or "Tractarian" movement, but its inward source lay deeper. Having lost all confidence ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... sovereign, that is to say, one who does not obey a clerical body that set themselves up as the directors of his belief, who opposes the sacred views of an infallible church, and who might occasion the loss and apostasy of a large part of the nation,—it is natural that the priests should conclude it to be legitimate for subjects to attack such a prince, alleging their religion to be the most important thing in the world, and dearer than life itself. Actuated ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... thou wilt. 'Tis she, I know, Bertha of Bruneck, draws thee to the court; 'Tis she that chains thee to the Emperor's service. Thou think'st to win the noble knightly maid By thy apostasy. Be not deceived. She is held out before thee as a lure; But never meant ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

... future life in particular. The one comprehensive design of the writer, it is perfectly clear, is to prove to the Christian converts from the Hebrews the superiority of Christianity to Judaism, and thus to arm them against apostasy from the new covenant to the ancient one. He begins by showing that Christ, the bringer of the gospel, is greater than the angels, by whom the law was given,19 and consequently that his word is to be reverenced still ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... committed, would have found no surer method of repairing them than by going away, and restoring to Edmee her perfect independence and absolute peace of mind. This was the only method which did not occur to me; or if it did, it was rejected with scorn, as a sign of apostasy. Stubbornness, allied to temerity, ran through my veins with the blood of the Mauprats. No sooner had I imagined a means of winning her whom I loved than I embraced it with audacity; and I think it would not have ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... wonderment which usually attaches to singularity much more comfortably than I anticipated. There were also two others in the school, who had formerly gone a considerable way in the path of classic lore, and had turned aside, but who, now repenting of their apostasy, returned to their former faith. These were likewise well grown up, and I may state that they are now both eminent as scholars and public men. The individual first mentioned and I sat in the master's desk, which he rarely, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... Holiness (Lev. xvii.-xxvi.). (2) The second appendix, chaps, xxix.-xxxi. 29, xxxii. 45-47, gives us the farewell address of Moses and is certainly later than D. Moses is represented as speaking not with any hope of preventing Israel's apostasy but because he knows that the people will eventually prove apostate (xxxi. 29), a point of view very different from D's. (3) The Song of Moses, chap. xxxii. That this didactic poem must have been written late in the nation's ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... from the opportunity it afforded to potentates and great nobles for helping themselves to Church property. No doubt many Netherlanders thought that their fortunes might be improved at the expense of the monks, and for the benefit of religion. Even without apostasy from the mother Church, they looked with longing eyes on the wealth of her favored and indolent children. They thought that the King would do well to carve a round number of handsome military commanderies out of the abbey lands, whose possessors should ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... being a d'Urberville. When he found that Tess came of that exhausted ancient line, and was not of the new tribes from below, as he had fondly dreamed, why had he not stoically abandoned her in fidelity to his principles? This was what he had got by apostasy, and ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... proper words in reference to the things which we have here described, what, we ask, save the want either of weight or of exertion on the part of the represented bodies who complain of it, can be properly regarded as the cause of that apostasy? A representative Government, if the represented be Episcopalian, will itself be officially Episcopalian; if the represented be Papist, it will itself be officially Papist; if the represented be Presbyterian, it will itself be officially Presbyterian; if composed of all three ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... faith and patience remains, through the weakness and apparent apostasy of Savonarola. Has he, through whom first came to her definite guidance amid the dark perplexities of her life, been always untrue? has the light that seemed through him to dawn on her been therefore misleading and perverting? In almost agonised intentness she listens for some word, ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown

... the faith; he ordered, therefore, a strict investigation of the conduct of these pseudo-Christians. Inquisitors were sent into the provinces for the purpose, who proceeded with their accustomed zeal. The consequence was, that many families were convicted of apostasy from the Christian faith and of the private practice of Judaism. Some, who had grace and policy sufficient to reform in time, were again received into the Christian fold after being severely mulcted and condemned to heavy penance; others were burnt at "auto de fes" for the edification ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... treason applauded with adoration; and he who never knew the law of reason, making laws. There were seen thefts, conflagrations, profanations of the temples, persecutions, scorn, and the evangelical ministers killed sacrilegiously; the Catholic religion abandoned in great part; and the door opened to apostasy and infidelity. For what time, then, is the purpose of inexorable justice, if it is not applied at such a time? That was no sickness that could be cured by mild means when only iron and fire were found capable of reestablishing that vast body in health, rigor exercised there being a ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various

... assist and support him. He, too, was arrested, and even terrified into temporary submission; but at the next audience of the council he reaffirmed his faith, and declared that of all his sins he repented of none more than his apostasy from the doctrines he had maintained. In consequence of this avowal he was condemned to the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... testimonial, equally as desirable to you as that "He acts like a Christian," is to our fellow-citizens of the faith alluded to: and let those who think that the only worth of the Jewish religion is to be measured by the purchase-money offered for apostasy from it, find that the price they pay is only a bribe for seeming assent from the outcasts of society, and that the very worst and lowest Jew is sufficiently informed to know that he will not be raised ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown

... of the soul from God the best of theology traces the ultimate cause of sin. Sin is simply apostasy from God, unbelief in God. "Sin is manifest in its true character when the demand of holiness in the conscience, presenting itself to the man as one of loving submission to God, is put from him with aversion. Here sin appears as it really is, ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... by which he renounced, then and for ever, Christianity. "But, as he had no new religion to adopt in its place, and as, grown more prudent and calm, he did not wish to accuse himself unnecessarily, once more, of inconstancy and apostasy, he still maintained all the exterior forms of the worship which inwardly he had abjured. But it was not enough for him to have quitted error, it was necessary to discover truth. But Hebronius had well looked round to ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... right—that is to say, on direct Divine institution in the New Testament, or whether its origin and character were simply such as the Imperial Crown, for example, possessed in relation to the German nation. He was well aware how charges of heresy and apostasy were raised against him, and how industriously Eck had promoted them. It was only with pain and inward struggles that he stood out, Bible in hand, against the Council of Constance and such a general gathering of Western Christendom. But not a step ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin



Words linked to "Apostasy" :   desertion, forsaking, abandonment, rejection



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