Romans 1:11 - Wesley's Explanatory Notes

That I may impart to you — Face to face, by laying on of hands, prayer, preaching the gospel, private conversation. Some spiritual gift — With such gifts the Corinthians, who had enjoyed the presence of St. Paul, abounded, 1 Corinthians 1:7; 1 Corinthians 12:1; 1 Corinthians 14:1. So did the Galatians likewise, Galatians 3:5; and, indeed, all those churches which had had the presence of any of the apostles had peculiar advantages in this kind, from the laying on of their hands, Acts 19:6; Acts 8:17, &c., 2 Timothy 1:6. But as yet the Romans were greatly inferior to them in this respect; for which reason the apostle, in the twelfth chapter also, says little, if any thing, of their spiritual gifts. He therefore desires to impart some, that they might be established; for by these was the testimony of Christ confirmed among them. That St. Peter had no more been at Rome than St. Paul, at the time when this epistle was wrote, appears from the general tenor thereof, and from this place in particular: for, otherwise, what St. Paul wishes to impart to the Romans would have been imparted already by St. Peter.