Now as we have had St. Jerome in a noted place appealing to Rome, and acknowledging her primacy, let us take another passage of his which, I think, implicitly denies St. Leo's view. Arguing then against the pride of the Roman deacons, in which city, as they were only seven in number, the office was in higher estimation than even the priesthood, which was numerous, he observes, "Nor is the Church of the Roman city to be considered one, and that of the whole world another. Both the Gauls, and the Britains, and Africa, and Persia, and the East, and India, and all barbarous nations, adore one Christ, observe one rule of truth. If you require authority, _the world is greater than the city_. Wherever a bishop is, be it at Rome, or Eugubium, or Constantinople, or Rhegium, or Alexandria, or Tanae, he is of the same rank, the same priesthood. The power of riches, and the humility of poverty, make a bishop neither higher nor lower. But all are successors of the Apostles. But you say, how is it that at Rome a priest is ordained upon the testimony of a deacon? Why allege to me _the custom of a single city_? Why defend against the laws of the Church a fewness of number, which is the source of their pride?"[74] The very force of St. Leo's view lies in the exact contradictory of St. Jerome's words: viz. _the city is greater than the world_, and this alone justifies and bears out the present claim of the Roman see, and its attitude both to those within, and to those without, its pale. But fourthly, had this government, as imaged out by St. Leo, been submitted to not only in Gaul, Spain, Africa, and Illyricum, but throughout the West generally, all this would still be nothing for its catholicity, and therefore its binding effect, unless it had been allowed by the East. Now we have the strongest proof that it never was so allowed. This interference, and much more, the centralization pointed at, as it never would have been tolerated, so neither was it attempted, in the patriarchates of the East. There was far less danger of the patriarchal power becoming excessive, when it was possessed by five, who were a check to each other. St. Leo's influence and authority in the West were balanced by the exercise of like influence and authority in the East, originally by the sees of Alexandria and Antioch, and at this and later times still more by that of Constantinople. And though throughout the East the Bishop of Rome was reckoned the first of these in rank, yet the Easterns were governed entirely by their own Patriarchs. So far from there being any authority delegated by Rome to the Eastern Patriarchs, there was no appeal from them to Rome, that is to say, in a matter belonging to their particular government; for as to the general faith of the Church, in any peculiar emergency or violation of the usual order of procedure, there was an appeal, if not lawful, at least exercised, to any of the Patriarchs.