also would have helped me, that justice holds guilty those sinning by evil will alone, although they may have been unable to accomplish what they willed. 13.  For who could have said that, in adducing these considerations, I was dwelling upon obscure and recondite things, where on account of the fewness of those able to understand, either fraud or suspicion of ostentation is accustomed to arise?  Let that distinction between intelligible and sensible things withdraw for a little:  let me not be found fault with for fol- lowing up slow minds with the stimuli of subtle disputations.  Permit me to know that I live, permit me to know that I will to live.  If in this the human race agrees, as our life is known to us, so also is our will.  Nor when we become possessed of this knowledge, is there any occasion to fear lest any one should convince us that we may be deceived; for no one can be deceived as to whether he does not live, or wishes nothing.  I do not think that I have adduced anything obscure, and my concern is rather lest some should find fault with me for dwelling on things that are too manifest.  But let us consider the bearing of these things. 14.  Sinning therefore takes place only by exercise of will.  But our will is very well known to us; for neither should I know that I will, if I did not know what will itself is.  Accordingly, 103 it is thus defined:  will is a movement of mind, no one compelling, either for not losing or the will?  But this sin concerning which the apostle has spoken is called sin, because by sin it was done, and it is the penalty of sin; since this is said concerning carnal concupiscence, which he discloses in what follows saying:  ‘I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good; for to will is present to me, but to accomplish that which is good, is not.’ (Rom. vii. 16-18).  Since the perfection of good is, that not even the concupiscence of sin should be in man, to which indeed when one lives well the will does not consent; nevertheless man does not accomplish the good because as yet concupiscence is in him, to which the will is antagonistic, the guilt of which concupiscence is loosed by baptism, but the infirmity remains, against which until it is healed every believer who advances well most earnestly struggles.  But sin, which is never but in will, must especially be known as that which is followed by just condemnation.  For this through one man entered into the world; although that sin also by which consent is yielded to concupiscence is not committed but by will.  Wherefore also in another place I have said:  ‘Not therefore except by will is sin committed.’"—A.H.N. On this matter Augustin’s still earlier treatise De Libero Arbitrio, and his interesting Retractations on the same, should be compared.  The reader of these earlier treatises in comparison with the Anti-Pelagian treatises can hardly fail to recognize a marked change of base on Augustin’s part.  His efforts to show the consistency of his earlier with his later modes of thought are to be pronounced only partially successful.  The fact is, that in the Anti-Manichæan time he went too far in maintaining the absolute freedom of the will and the impossibility of sin apart from personal will in the sinner; while in the Anti-Pelagian time he ventured too near to the fatalism that he so earnestly combated in the Manichæans.—A.H.N. 175 Sin is Only from the Will.  His Own Life and Will Best Known to Each Individual. …