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4: Peter laid all things before them - So he did not take it
ill to be questioned, nor desire to be treated as infallible.
And he answers the more mildly because it related to a point
which he had not readily believed himself.
5: Being in a trance - Which suspends the use of the outward senses.
14: Saved - With the full Christian salvation, in this world and
the world to come.
17: To us, when we believed - The sense is, because we believed,
not because we were circumcised, was the Holy Ghost given to us.
What was I - A mere instrument in God's hand. They had inquired
only concerning his eating with the Gentiles. He satisfies them
likewise concerning his baptizing them, and shows that he had
done right in going to Cornelius, not only by the command of God,
but also by the event, the descent of the Holy Ghost.
And who are we that we should withstand God? Particularly by
laying down rules of Christian communion which exclude any
whom he has admitted into the Church of the first born, from
worshipping God together. O that all Church governors would
consider how bold an usurpation this is on the authority of the
supreme Lord of the Church! O that the sin of thus withstanding
God may not be laid to the charge of those, who perhaps with a
good intention, but in an over fondness for their own forms,
have done it, and are continually doing it.
18: They glorified God - Being thoroughly satisfied. Repentance
unto life - True repentance is a change from spiritual death to
spiritual life, and leads to life everlasting.
19: They who had been dispersed - St. Luke here resumes the thread
of his narration, in the very words wherewith he broke it off,(Ac 8:6). As far as Phenicia to the north, Cyprus to the
west, and Antioch to the east.
20: Some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene - Who were more
accustomed to converse with the Gentiles. Who coming into
Antioch - Then the capital of Syria, and, next to Rome and
Alexandria, the most considerable city of the empire. Spake
to the Greeks - As the Greeks were the most celebrated of the
Gentile nations near Judea, the Jews called all the Gentiles
by that name. Here we have the first account of the preaching
the Gospel to the idolatrous Gentiles. All those to whom it
had been preached before, did at least worship one God, the
God of Israel.
21: And the hand of the Lord - That is, the power of his Spirit.
26: And the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch
- Here it was that they first received this standing appellation.
They were before termed Nazarenes and Galileans.
28: Agabus rising up - In the congregation. All the world - The
word frequently signifies all the Roman empire. And so it is
doubtless to be taken here.
29: Then - Understanding the distress they would otherwise be
in on that account, the disciples determined to send relief to
the brethren in Judea - Who herein received a manifest proof of
the reality of their conversion.
30: Sending it to the elders - Who gave it to the deacons, to be
distributed by them, as every one had need.
