Yepez, and Sainte Marie. Bossuet, while he condemned Madame
Guyon for the same mystical piety which marked Saint Theresa, still
bowed down to the authority of the writings of the saint, while Fleury
quotes them with the decrees of the Council of Trent.

But Saint Theresa ever was submissive to the authority of the Pope and
of her spiritual directors. She would not have been canonized by Gregory
XV. had she not been. So long as priests and nuns have been submissive
to the authority of the Church, the Church has been lenient to their
opinions. Until the Reformation, there was great practical freedom of
opinion in the Catholic Church. Nor was the Church of the sixteenth
century able to see the logical tendency of the mysticism of Saint
Theresa, since it was not coupled with rebellion against spiritual
despotism. It was not until the logical and dogmatic intellect of
Bossuet discerned the spiritual independence of the Jansenists and
Quietists, that persecution began against them. Had Saint Theresa lived
a century later, she would probably have shared the fate of Madame
Guyon, whom she resembled more closely than any other woman that I have
read of,--in her social position, in her practical intellect, despite
the visions of a dreamy piety, in her passionate love of the Saviour, in
her method of prayer, in her spiritual conflicts, in the benevolence
which marked all her relations with the world, in the divine charity
which breathed through all her words, and in the triumph of love over
all the fears inspired by a gloomy theology and a superstitious
priesthood. Both of these eminent women were poets of no ordinary merit;
both enjoyed the friendship of the most eminent men of their age; both
craved the society of the learned; both were of high birth and beautiful
in their youth, and fitted to adorn society by their brilliant talk as
well as graceful manners; both were amiable and sought to please, and
loved distinction and appreciation; both were Catholics, yet permeated
with the spirit of Protestantism, so far as religion is made a matter
between God and the individual soul, and marked by internal communion
with the Deity rather than by outward acts of prescribed forms; both had
confessors, and yet both maintained the freedom of their minds and
souls, and knew of no binding authority but that divine voice which
appealed to their conscience and heart, and that divine word which is
written in the Scriptures. After the love of Go