not acknowledge the need of a Redeemer. This
the great Bossuet foresaw; consequently, he, as the supreme religious
potentate of his inferior in rank, Fenelon, demanded the condemnation
by the latter of the works of Mme. Guyon. The refusal cost Fenelon
exile for life. To Mme. de Maintenon he wrote a letter which shows the
sincerity of his devotion to a friend in disgrace, even though his own
reputation was thereby endangered:

"So it is to secure my own reputation that I am wanted to subscribe
that a lady--my friend--would plainly deserve to be burned, with all
her writings, for an execrable form of spirituality which is the only
bond of our friendship. I tell you, madame, I would burn my friend
with my own hands, and I would burn myself joyfully, rather than
let the Church be imperilled; but here is a poor, captive woman,
overwhelmed with sorrows; there is none to defend her, none to excuse
her; all are afraid to do so. I maintain that this stroke of the pen,
given from a cowardly policy and against my conscience, would render
me forever infamous and unworthy of my ministry and my position."

Thus, in the seventeenth century, religious agitations and religious
reform were the work preeminently of women; but that reform and those
agitations were productive of good results to a far greater degree
than was any similar movement in any other century, with the possible
exception of the nineteenth. The seventeenth century was, as mentioned
before, a century of stability, one that toned down and crushed all
violations and abuses of the standard established by authority. Woman,
in her constant striving for the complete emancipation and gradual
purification of her sex, rebelled against the power of established
authority; she did not consciously or intentionally violate law and
order, but in her intense desire to act for good as she saw it, and
in her noble efforts to ameliorate all undesirable conditions, she
created commotion and confusion. The seventeenth-century woman is
conspicuous as a champion of religion, moral purity, and social
reform; therefore, her influence was mainly social, religious, moral,
and literary, while that of the woman of the sixteenth century was
mainly political. This difference was the result of the greater
advantages of education and training enjoyed by the females of the
later period.

In the beginning of the seventeenth century, young girls were granted
greater privileges and received more attenti