Acts 8:24 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Then answered Simon Alarmed by the solemn admonition given him; and said To the apostles; Pray ye to the Lord for me If you indeed conceive my case to be so bad, extend your charity so far as to make your supplications to the Lord on my account; that none of these things, which ye have spoken, come upon me He probably inferred, from what Peter had said, that some token of God's wrath would soon fall upon him, which he thus dreaded and deprecated. But there is reason to fear that this pretence of conviction and humiliation was used chiefly to prevent Peter and John from disgracing him among the body of Christians: for it is reasonable to suppose this conversation passed in private between them: and, perhaps, Simon might have some hope, that, if the secret were kept, he might reduce the people, when Peter was gone, to their former subjection to him, notwithstanding their conversion to Christianity.