Acts 5:5 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

And Ananias hearing these words, &c.— This severity was not only righteous, considering that complication of vain glory and covetousness, of fraud and impiety, which the action contained; but was wise and gracious, both as it served to vindicate the honour of the blessed Spirit, so notoriously affronted by this attempt to impose on those, who had been so lately and eminently anointed by his extraordinary effusion; and farther, as it tended most effectually to deter any dishonestpersons from joining the Christians, merely for the sake of a present alms, to which, by a fraud like this, many might on easy terms have purchased a pretence, who would also, no doubt, have proved a great scandal to a profession taken up on such infamous motives. (Comp. Acts 5:13.) This likewise was a very convincing attestation of the apostles' most upright conduct in the management of the sums with which they were entrusted, and indeed of their divine missionin general; for none can imagine, that St. Peter would have had the assurance to pronounce, and much less the power to execute, such a sentence as this, if he had been at the same time guilty of a much baser fraud of the like kind, or had been belying the Holy Ghost in the whole of his pretentious to be under his miraculous influence and direction.