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The great work to which Teresa gave up her whole life, after her full
conversion, was the purification of the existing monastic system, and the
multiplication and extension of Religious Houses of the strictest,
severest, most secluded, most prayerful, and most saintly life. She had
been told by those she too much trusted, that the Church of Christ was
being torn in pieces in Germany, and in Switzerland, and in France, and
in England by a great outbreak of heretical error; and, while the Society
of Jesus and the Secret Inquisition were established to cope with all
such heresy, Teresa set herself to counteract it by a widespread
combination of unceasing penance and intercessory prayer. It was a zeal
without knowledge; but there can be no doubt about the sincerity, the
single-mindedness, and the strength of the zeal. For forty as
hard-working years as ever any woman spent in this world, Teresa laboured
according to her best light to preserve the purity and the unity of the
Church of Christ. And the strength and the sagacity of mind, the tact,
the business talents, the tenacity of will, the patience, the endurance,
the perseverance, the sleepless watchfulness, and the abounding
prayerfulness that she brought to bear on the reformation and
multiplication of her fortresses of defence and attack in that holy war,
all taken together, make up one of the most remarkable pages in the whole
history of the Church of Christ.
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