Acts 10:34,35 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Of a truth I perceive, &c.— See on Deuteronomy 10:17. The phrase no respecter of persons, has principally, if not always, a judicial meaning. It is used in this sense, Leviticus 19:15. Deuteronomy 1:17 and, in the 16th verse of that chapter, this is expressly said to be a charge given to the judges of the land. In Deuteronomy 16:19. Respect of persons, (still confined to a judicial sense,) stands to denote corruption and taking of bribes, which, as it is there said with great eloquence, blind the eyes of the wise, &c. and this likewise is the constant notion, when it is applied to God; that there is no iniquity with the Lord, &c. See 2 Chronicles 19:7. The meaning of St. Peter's words is, "Of a truth I perceive that God accepts no man merely because he is of such a nation, or descended from such ancestors; but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him." As respect of persons in matters judicial, is shewed, when men judge others, not according to the equity of the cause, but according to outward respects which relate nothing to it, as the greatness, riches, meanness, or poverty of the person, relation, friendship, or affection; so in spirituals, to respect or accept persons is to respect them and their services, not on the account of any thing which makes them better, or more fit to be regarded than others, but on the account of the nation to which they belong, or the ancestors from which they were descended. Thus, because God had chosen the Jews to be his people, by reason of the piety of their forefathers, and to perform his promise made to them, the Jews imagined that God would accept them and their services on that account, because they were of the Jewish nation, and of the seed of Abraham according to the flesh; and that he would not accept the persons, or regard the services of the Gentiles, for want of these things: but these false conceptions St. Paul in his epistle to the Romans, and St. Peter here, refute; shewing, that men not only of the Jewish, but of any other nation, may be acceptable to God, there being one God who is rich, in goodness, to all that call upon him, whether Jew or Gentile, Romans 10:12 he being the God, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles, and so as ready to justify them through faith, as to justify the Jews through faith, Rom.iii. 29, 30. But I again refer my readers to my annotations on the epistle to the Roman