one who deserts his religion. Among the the Romanists, it signifies a man who, without a legal dispensation, forfakes a religious order of which he had made profession. Hence,

APOSTATA capiendo, in the English law, a writ that formerly lay against a person, who having entered into some order of religion, broke out again, and wandered up and down the country.

A POSTERIORI, or demonstration à posteriori. See Demonstration.