]
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.
Thus Theodoret of Cyrus, unjustly deposed by Dioscorus of Alexandria in the
Latrocinium of Ephesus, flies "to the Apostolic throne" of St. Leo; "for in
all things it is becoming that you should have the primacy. For your throne
is adorned with many advantages. It has the sepulchres of our common
Fathers and teachers of the truth, Peter and Paul. These have made your
throne exceedingly illustrious. This is the height of your blessings."[75]
Though a supplicant, he addresses him only as first Bishop of the Church,
not as monarch. It is a virtual denial of the present Papal authority,
because a silence, where it would have been put forward, had it been known.
So the heretic Eutyches, before the council of his own Patriarch, "when his
depositio