Mme. de Sable had remarkable gifts; her mission in politics, religion, and literature seems to have been to excite to action, to stimulate and to bring out to its fullest value, the talents and genius of others.  In her modest salon, she inspired the great and illustrious work which will keep her memory alive as long as the Maxims and Pensees are read.  Her name will be connected with that of Mme. de Longueville, because of their ideal friendship, and with that of Port-Royal because of her ardent and self-sacrificing support of it in the time of its direst persecution, when any exhibition of sympathy was dangerous in the extreme; and finally, her name will always be connected with that small circle of French society of the seventeenth century, which was noble, moral, and elevating to an unusual degree.

Somewhat later in the century a different movement was started by a woman, which involved many of the highest in rank at court.  This took the form of a kind of mystical enthusiasm, running into a theory of pure love, and was instigated by Mme. Guyon, a widow, still young, and gifted with a lofty and subtile mind.  After losing her husband, whom she had converted to her religious views, she went, in 1680, to Paris to educate her children.  Becoming interested in religion, she went to Geneva, where she became very intimate with a priest who was her spiritual director, and whom she soon wholly subjected to her influence.  On account of their views on sanctification, they were ordered to leave.

After travelling over Europe for a number of years, and writing several works, including Spiritual Torrents and Short and Easy Method of Making Orison with the Heart, the widow returned to Paris, with the intention of living in retirement; but so many persons of all ranks sought her out, that she organized, for ladies of rank, meetings for purposes of prayer and religious conversation.  The Duchess of Beauvilliers, the Duchess of Bethune, the Countess of Guiche, the Countess of Chevreuse, and many others, with their husbands, became her devoted adherents.

According to Mme. Guyon, prayer should lose the character of supplication, and become simply the silence of a soul absorbed in God.  “Why are not simple folks so taught?  Shepherds, keeping their flocks, would have the spirit of the old anchorites; and laborers, whilst driving the plow, would talk happily with God.  In a little while, vice would be banished and the kingdom of God would be realized on earth.”  Thus, her doctrine was directly opposite to the theories of the Jansenists.