We now enter on that period of the Apostolic Age which begins with St Paul's arrival at Rome. His long-cherished hope was at last fulfilled, though not in the way which he had proposed to himself. He had met face to face the Christian community which had grown up independently of all authoritative guidance in the distant capital; and, on the way, the Gentile offering which he carried to the Christians of Jerusalem had been accepted by their leaders, and he had escaped, though barely escaped, martyrdom at the hands of his unbelieving countrymen. Delivered from this danger, and shut up for two years at Caesarea, probably with great advantage to the cause for which he laboured, he had reached Rome at last as the prisoner of the Roman authorities. Here he spent another period of two years in another enforced seclusion, which still more evidently gave him a place of vantage for spreading the Gospel such as he could hardly have had as a mere visitor (see Lightfoot, Phil. 18 f.). The four extant Epistles belonging to this period are pervaded by a serenity and a sense of assurance such as are rarely to be found in their six predecessors, even in Romans, and this increased happiness of tone is closely connected with St Paul's thoughts and hopes about the various Ecclesiae and about the Ecclesia.