the abandoning the true religion. The primitive Christian church distinguished several kinds of apostacy. The first, of those who went over entirely from Christianity to Judaism; the second, of those who mingled Judaism and Christianity together; and the third, of those who complied so far with the Jews as to communicate with them in many of their unlawful practices, without making a formal profession of their religion. But the fourth sort was of those who, after having been some time Christians, voluntarily relapsed into Paganism.

The perversion of a Christian to Judaism, Paganism, or other false religion, was punished by the emperors Constantius and Julian with confiscation of goods; to which the emperors Theodosius and Valentinian added capital punishment, in case the apostate endeavoured to pervert others to the same iniquity. A punishment too severe for any temporal laws to inflict; and yet the zeal of our ancestors imported it into this country; for we find by Bracon, that in his time apostates were to be burnt to death. Doubtless the preservation of Christianity, as a national religion, is abstracted from its own intrinsic truth, of the utmost consequence to the civil state: which a single instance will sufficiently demonstrate. The belief of a future state of rewards and punishments, the entertaining just ideas of the moral attributes of the supreme Being, and a firm persuasion that he superintends and will finally compensate every action in human life (all which are clearly revealed in the doctrines, and forcibly inculcated by the precepts, of our Saviour Christ), these are the grand foundation of all judicial oaths; which call God to witness the truth of those facts, which perhaps may be only known to him and the party attesting: all moral evidence therefore, all confidence in human veracity, must be weakened by apostacy, and overthrown by total infidelity. Wherefore all affronts to Christianity, or endeavours to depreciate its efficacy, in those who have once professed it, are highly deserving of censure. But yet the loss of life is a heavier penalty than the offence, taken in a civil light, deserves; and, taken in a spiritual light, our laws have no jurisdiction over it. This punishment, therefore, has long ago become obsolete; and the offence of apostacy was for a long time the object only of the ecclesiastical courts, which corrected the offender pro salute animæ. But about the close of the last century, the civil liberties to which we were then restored being used as a cloak of maliciousness, and the most horrid doctrine subversive of all religion being publicly avowed both in discourse and writings, it was thought necessary again for the civil power to interfere, by not admitting those miscreants to the privileges of society, who maintained such principles as destroyed all moral obligation. To this end it was enacted by statute 9 and 10 W. III. c. 32. That if any person educated in, or having made profession of, the Christian religion, shall by writing, printing, teaching, or advised speaking, deny the Christian religion to be true, or the holy Scriptures to be of divine authority, he shall upon the first offence be rendered incapable to hold any office or place of trust; and, for the second, be rendered incapable of bringing any action, or of being guardian, executor, legatee, or purchaser of lands, and shall suffer three years imprisonment without bail. To give room however for repentance, if, within four months after the first conviction, the delinquent will in open court publicly renounce his error, he is discharged for that once from all disabilities.