They have defensive ends

Usage examples of apologists.

I leave on one side the old metaphysical arguments, since religious apologists themselves have thrown them over.

Under the influence of this reaction against natural law, some Christian apologists have seized upon the latest doctrines of the atom, which tend to show that the physical laws in which we have hitherto believed have only an approximate and average truth as applied to large numbers of atoms, while the individual electron behaves pretty much as it likes.