As to the question of the papacy he considered the bishop of Rome as the successor of Peter, the prince of the Apostles, and appealed to him in his exile against the unjust condem- nation of the Council at the Oak. Such appeals furnished the popes with a welcome oppor- tunity to act as judges in the controversies of the Eastern church, and greatly strengthened their claims. But his Epistle to Innocent was addressed also to the bishops of Milan and Aquileia, and falls far short of the language of submission to an infallible authority. He conceded to the pope merely a primacy of honor (προστασία, ‡ρχή), not a supremacy of jurisdiction. He calls the bishop of Antioch (Ignatius and Flavian) likewise a successor of Peter, who labored there according to the express testimony of Paul. In commenting on Gal. i. 18, he represents Paul as equal in dignity (¸σότιμος) to Peter.34 He was free from jealousy of Rome, but had he lived during the violent controversies between the patriarch of new Rome and the pope of old Rome, it is not doubtful on which side he would have stood. In one important point Chrysostom approaches the evangelical theology of the Reform- ation, his devotion to the Holy Scriptures as the only rule of faith. “There is no topic on which he dwells more frequently and earnestly than on the duty of every Christian man and 22 woman to study the Bible: and what he bade others do, that he did pre-eminently himself.”35 He deemed the reading of the Bible the best means for the promotion of Christian life. A Christian without the knowledge of the Scriptures is to him a workman without tools. Even the sight of the Bible deters from sin, how much more the reading. It purifies and consecrates the soul, it introduces it into the holy of holies and brings it into direct communion with God.36 34 See his letter to Innocent I. and his comments on Gal. i. and ii. The passages of Chrysostom on Peter and his successors are collected in Berington & Kirk, The Faith of Catholics, ed. 3, vol. II. 32–35, 80, but the important passage from his Commentary on Galatians is omitted. See Treat, The Catholic Faith (1888), p. 396. 35 Stephens, p. 422. 36 Comp. the rich extracts from his writings bearing on the Bible, in Neander, I. 211–226. 33 His Theology and Exegesis.