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 God had subdued their hearts, we read but little of penances, or self-expiations, or forms of worship, or church ceremonies, or priestly rigors, or any of the slaveries and formalities which bound ordinary people.  Their piety was mystical, sometimes visionary, and not always intelligible, but deep, sincere, and lofty.  Of the two women, I think Saint Theresa was the more remarkable, and had the most originality.  Madame Guyon seems to have borrowed much from her, especially in her methods of prayer.