Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume XI/John Cassian/Conferences of John Cassian, Part I/Conference II/Chapter 3

Chapter III.

Of the error of Saul and of Ahab, by which they were deceived through lack of discretion.

, the man who in the judgment of God was the first to be worthy of the kingdom of His people Israel, because he was lacking in this &#8220;eye&#8221; of discretion, was, as if his whole body were full of darkness, actually cast down from the kingdom while, being deceived by the darkness of this &#8220;light,&#8221; and in error, he imagined that his own offerings were more acceptable to God than obedience to the command of Samuel, and met with an occasion of falling in that very matter in which he had hoped to propitiate the Divine Majesty. And ignorance, I say, of this discretion led Ahab the king of Israel after a triumph and splendid victory which had been granted to him by the favour of God to fancy that mercy on his part was better than the stern execution of the divine command, and, as it seemed to him, a cruel rule: and moved by this consideration, while he desired to temper a bloody victory with mercy, he was on account of his indiscriminating clemency rendered full of darkness in his whole body, and condemned irreversibly to death.