[Footnote 15: St. Augustine, _Epist. CLXXXIX._, _ad Bonifacium_, 4 (Migne, _op. cit._ xxxiii. 855).] [Footnote 16: St. Augustine, _Epistola XLVII._, _ad Publicolam_, 5 (Migne, _op. cit._ xxxiii. 187).] [Footnote 17: St. Augustine, _Epist. CLXXXIX._, _ad Bonifacium_, 4 (Migne, _op. cit._ xxxiii. 855).] [Footnote 18: _St. Matthew_, xxvi. 52.] [Footnote 19: St. Augustine, _Contra Faustum Manichæum_, xxii. 70 (Migne, _op. cit._ xlii, 444).] [Footnote 20: St. Augustine, _Contra Faustum Manichæum_, xxii. 75 (Migne, _op. cit._ xlii. 448).] [Footnote 21: St. Augustine, _De civitate Dei_, xix. 11.] By the writings of St. Augustine the theoretical attitude of the Church towards war was definitely settled, and later theologians only reproduced or further elaborated his views. Yet it was not with a perfectly safe conscience that Christianity thus sanctioned the practice of war. There was a feeling that a soldier scarcely could make a good Christian. In the middle of the fifth century, Leo the Pope declared it to be contrary to the rules of the Church that persons after the action of penance--that is, persons then considered to be pre-eminently bound to obey the law of Christ--should revert to the profession of arms.[22] Various Councils forbade the clergy to engage in warfare,[23] and certain canons excluded from ordination all who had served in an army after baptism.[24] Penance was prescribed for those who had shed blood on the battle-field.[25] Thus {349} the ecclesiastical canons made in William the Conqueror's reign by the Norman prelates, and confirmed by the Pope, directed that he who was aware that he had killed a man in a battle should do penance for one year, and that he who had killed several should do a year's penance for each.[26] Occasionally the Church seemed to wake up to the evils of war in a more effective way; there are several notorious instances of wars being forbidden by popes. But in such cases the prohibition was only too often due to the fact that some particular war was disadvantageous to the interests of the Church. And whilst doing comparatively little to discourage wars which did not interfere with her own interests, the Church did all the more to excite war against those who were objects of her hatred. [Footnote 22: Leo Magnus, _Epistola XC._, _ad Rusticum_, inquis. 12 (Migne, _op. cit._ liv. 1206 _sq._).]