Acts 8:15-17

Who, when they were come down,— Hence it appears very probable, that the Spirit, in some or other of his miraculous powers, had been conferred upon all the Christian converts hitherto; and it was highly proper that the Samaritans should have that divine gift, both as a confirmation of the truth of the Christian doctrine in general, and as an evidence to them in particular, that however they had been formerly hated by the Jews, yet, under the gospel, they might be equally acceptable to God with the Jews, and be as openly and fully entitled to all the privileges of the church, and of the people of God. From what follows it is plain, that the Holy Spirit was here conferred in his supernatural and miraculous influences; for Simon the magician saw some of the wondrous effects of that divine gift immediately, by the new converts speaking languages which they had never learned, or prophesying, or working miracles; and it was this which made him so earnestly covet that apostolic power. They who fancy that the apostles at this time conferred only those which have been commonly called the standing, or the sanctifying influences of the Spirit, surely cannot deny, that if their power had been so limited, their bestowing of the gift of the Holy Ghost would have been otherwise expressed; as the whole work of grace, from the first dawning of the divine light to the perfection of it, originates in the influences of the Holy Spirit. Nor would that magician, very probably, have given any thing, either for the sanctifying influences of the Spirit, or for the power to confer them upon others, supposing God would have bestowed such an extraordinary favour upon him.

The apostles, who alone had a power of imparting them, appear to have conferred some or other of the miraculous gifts upon all adult Christians wherever they came. Upon the apostles themselves, and the rest of the hundred and twenty, the Spirit was poured down immediately from heaven, and without the laying on of the hands of any man; but upon the other Jewish converts, the apostles laid their hands, and thereby conferred that divine gift. As the Samaritans were now Jews by religion, and many of them even descended from Jewish parents, and as our Lord himself had during his own personal ministry treated them as Jews, there was no occasion for the pouring down of the Holy Spirit, in any of his miraculous gifts, upon them before baptism, to prepare the way for their being received into the Christian church: as there manifestly was afterwards in the case of the first-fruits from among the Gentiles: and, on the other hand, supposing the Samaritans had not been favoured with any spiritual gifts and miraculous powers; that is, neither before baptism nor after it; they would have come behind other churches, and might thereupon have been ready to question, whether they who had been so peculiarly odious to the Jews, were now accepted of God equally, and to like privileges with the Jews, from among whom came the Saviour and salvation to mankind. The two apostles, therefore, went down, and conferred upon them the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost. Thus, accordingto the wise and beauteous scheme of raising the new creation, the Jewish and Samaritan Christians were both treated alike; and how great soever their mutual aversion had been, the benign spirit of Christianity laid the foundation for abating their mutual prejudices, for healing their unhappy differences, and for making them lookupon one another as brethren in Christ Jesus, and equally acceptable to God; who is in the gospel most plainly declared to be the God and Father, in a peculiarly eminent sense, of all who believe in and obey Christ, whether Jews, Samaritans, or Gentiles.