Father Charlevoix alludes to the opinion of “two learned prelates who have not always been of the same opinion [evidently Bossuet and Fénelon], but who, nevertheless, agree in regarding her as one of the brightest lights of her age.” Bossuet in one of his arguments says:
“Mother Mary of the Incarnation, Ursuline, who is called the Teresa of our days and of the New World, in a lively impression of the inexorable justice of God, condemned herself to an eternity of pain and offered herself for it, in order that God’s justice might be satisfied, provided only, she said, ‘that I be not deprived of the love of God and of God himself.’”
Mr. Emery, superior of St. Sulpice at Paris, wrote:
“The Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation is a saint whom I revere most sincerely, and whom I place in my esteem beside St. Teresa. In my last retreat her life, her letters, and her meditations alone constituted my reading and the subject of my mental prayer.”
Father Charlevoix wrote her life in gratitude for favors obtained by her intercession.
“Indebted,” says he, “as I have reason to believe, to the merits of the foundress of the Ursulines in Canada that I did not end my days in a foreign land in the flower of my life, it seemed to me that I could not do less than extend her knowledge among men. Not that she was hitherto unknown. The eulogium pronounced upon her by the greatest men, and her own works, in which we admire an exquisite taste, sound reason, a sublime genius, and that divine unction which so well distinguishes the writings of the saints, have already placed her in the rank of the most illustrious women.”
Father Galifet, in one of his spiritual works, says:
“Her life was full of marvels by the heroic virtues she practised, by the supernatural gifts with which she was endowed, by the choicest favors of her divine Spouse, by unspeakable communications of the Divinity, by the wisdom she derived from the Scriptures and from the mysteries of faith, and finally by the experience she had of all conditions of interior life, which rendered her a thorough mistress in this Divine knowledge.... This wonderful servant of God had an extraordinary devotion for the Sacred Heart of Jesus at a time when this devotion was yet unknown. She could have learned nothing about it from men. It was from God himself that she learned this in a heavenly revelation.”
Even Protestant writers, to whom all Catholic spiritual life is something unreal and deserving only of scorn and contempt, blasphemantes quæ ignorant, recognize in Mother Mary of the Incarnation a woman of a rare and singular combination of qualities, and never ascribe to her a fault. “She had uncommon talents and strong religious sensibilities,” says Parkman. “Strange as it may seem, this woman, whose habitual state was one of mystical abstraction, was gifted to a rare degree with the faculties most useful in the practical affairs of life.” “Her talent for business was not the less displayed.” “Now and henceforward one figure stands nobly conspicuous in this devoted sisterhood. Marie de l’Incarnation, ... engaged in the duties of Christian charity and the responsibilities of an arduous post, displays an ability, a fortitude, and an earnestness which command respect and admiration.” “Marie de l’Incarnation in her saddest moments neither failed in judgment nor slackened in effort. She carried on a vast correspondence, embracing every one in France who could aid her infant community with money or influence; she harmonized and regulated it with excellent skill; and in the midst of relentless austerities, she was loved as a mother by her pupils and dependants. Catholic writers extol her as a saint. Protestants may see in her a Christian heroine, admirable with all her follies and faults.”
The follies and faults consisted in her being a Catholic, a nun, and in rising to the higher states of mystical life.