Secondly: The Epistle to the Romans sets before us the state of this belief in a Church which St. Paul had not visited. Of the exact date of the foundation of this Church we have no record; but the entire contents of the Epistle prove that it had been in existence for many years before the Apostle addressed to them this letter. The general impression produced by it is that this was one of the most important Christian communities then in existence. We learn from it that among its members were persons attached to the household of Nero. As the intercourse between Rome and Judæa was very considerable, there can be no doubt that the Church originated at an early period, either by Christian Jews visiting the imperial city, or by Roman Jews visiting Judæa and having thus become converted. At any rate its Christianity must have been derived from a source entirely independent of St. Paul. The evidence afforded by this Epistle as to the importance and universal prevalence of the belief in the Resurrection, and to its early origin is conclusive. The allusions to it are more numerous than in any other of St. Paul’s Epistles. Most of them are of an entirely incidental character, and their general nature proves beyond the possibility of question that both the writer and those to whom he wrote must have viewed the fact as the fundamental groundwork of Christianity. The reference to a few passages will render this point indubitable. An allusion of a most incidental character as forming the ground of the writer’s apostleship occurs in the very opening words of the Epistle: “And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, _by the resurrection from the dead_; by whom we have _received grace and apostleship_ for obedience to the faith among all nations for his name.” It is inconceivable that St. Paul should have thus addressed a body of strangers, at the very commencement of his letter, unless he had been certain that they accepted this belief as an unquestionable fact.