But since we hope that, while the long-suffering patience of God still invites you to repent, you may become wiser and your heart may be turned to obey the commands of God, we warn you with fatherly love that, knowing the rule of Christ to be over you, you should consider how dangerous it is to place your honor above His, and that you should not interfere with the liberty of the Church which He has deigned to join to Himself by heavenly union, but rather with faithful devotion you should offer your assistance to the increasing of this liberty to omnipotent God and St. Peter, through whom also your glory may be enhanced. You ought to recognize what you undoubtedly owe to them for giving you victory over your enemies,[387] that as they have gladdened you with great prosperity, so they should see that you are thereby rendered more devout. And in order that the fear of God, in whose hands is all power and all rule, may affect your heart more than these our warnings, you should recall what happened to Saul, when, after winning the victory which he gained by the will of the prophet, he glorified himself in his triumph and did not obey the warnings of the prophet, and how God reproved him; and, on the other hand, what grace King David acquired by reason of his humility, as well as his other virtues. 47. Henry IV.'s Reply to Gregory's Letter (January, 1076) In 1059, when Nicholas II. was pope and Hildebrand was yet only a cardinal, a council assembled at the Lateran decreed that henceforth the right of electing the sovereign pontiff should be vested exclusively in the college of cardinals, or in other words, in seven cardinal bishops in the vicinity of Rome and a certain number of cardinal priests and deacons attached to the parishes of the city. The people and clergy generally were deprived of participation in the election, except so far as merely to give their consent. Hildebrand seems to have been the real author of the decree. Nevertheless, in 1073, when he was elevated to the papal chair, the decree of 1059 was in a measure ignored, for he was elected by popular vote and his choice was only passively sanctioned by the cardinals. When, therefore, the quarrel between him and Henry IV. came on, the latter was not slow to make use of the weapon which Hildebrand's (or Gregory's) uncanonical election placed in his hands. In replying, January 24, 1076, to the papal letter of December, 1075, he bluntly addresses himself to "Hildebrand, not pope, but false monk," and writes a stinging epistle in the tone thus assumed in his salutation. In his arraignment of Gregory the king doubtless went far beyond the truth; but the fact remains that Gregory's dominating purposes in the interest of the papal authority threatened to cut deeply into the independence of all temporal sovereigns, and therefore rendered such resistance as Henry offered quite inevitable. In the interim between