THE EMOTIONAL EVANGELICAL:
BLAKE AND WESLEY
by
Barbara S. Worden
When Leigh Hunt openly disapproved of William Blake's "Emotional evangelicism," he further defined this term of opprobrium as a type of "Sacro-sensualism" and "amatory Methodism." 1 However, it is possible that like such older epithets as "Quaker" and "Christian," this intended slur contains a profound truth. What Hunt perceives as a defect is in fact a real relationship between certain of the ideas presented in the writings of William Blake, especially Milton, and some of the ideas presented in the writings of John Wesley. This relationship can be seen with particular strength in Blake's and Wesley's formulations of three major concepts: the nature of fallen human life, the process of attaining salvation, and the effects of salvation once achieved.
The strong relationship between these men is not simply one of those strange similarities that forms an accidental irony of literary history. Rather, the perception of these similarities is supported by solid factual evidence of Blake's acquaintance with the ideas of Methodism. The Methodist movement spread rapidly. 2 By 1804, the composition date of Milton, it had not only resulted in the formation of a separate denomination, but Methodism had permeated the Church of England, helping to inspire a powerful evangelical movement in the Mother Church. 3 Not only did Blake have an opportunity to know of the ideas of Methodism through its wide and rapid spread in England, he also knew Methodist doctrine from one of its sources. It is a matter of fact that in 1790 Blake owned a copy of John and Charles Wesley's first hymn book, Hymns for the Nation in 1782,4, a work full of their joint efforts in poetry, poetry whose goal was the exposition of Methodist doctrine in a pleasing form. 5 Scholars such as Martha England in her illuminating series of articles for the Bulletin of the New York Public Library have acknowledged the influence of the hymns on Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. 6
There is also evidence of Blake's parents' attendance at one of the numerous Moravian chapels in London, chapels which had been founded by John Wesley in association with the Moravian leader Peter Böhler. The list of members for the Fetter Lane Society in 1743 includes the name Blake in the Married Men's Life and C. Blake in the Married women's List. No Christian names are given for the men, but the evidence is strong that these two people were Blake's parents since they resided in this neighborhood at the time. 7 Wesley's involvement with Moravians began on his first voyage to Georgia, when he was impressed by the faith and calm fortitude of a group of Moravians who were travelling on the same ship. This experience was crucial for the development of Wesley's doctrine of justification by faith. 8 When Wesley returned from Georgia, he spent an extensive period of study in Germany with Moravian leaders, June 13 through September 16, 1738. 9 He met with Peter Böhler on the day the latter arrived in England, February 7, 1738, and together they drew up the statutes for the first Society of Brethren which met in Fetter Lane Chapel.
Thus, it is possible to say Blake was acquainted with Methodist ideas as a child through his parents and as an adult through his knowledge of the hymns of the Wesley brothers and the wide appeal of evangelical ideas in England. In addition to this evidence, there are Blake's works, especially Milton where Wesley and Whitefield, Methodism's most famous preacher, are made part of the symbolism of the poem:
Heaven as a Punisher & Hell as One under Punishment:
With Laws from Platon & His Greeks to renew the Trojan Gods,
In Albion; & deny the value of the Saviours blood.
But then I raised up Whitefield, Palambron raised up Wesley,
And these are the cries of the Churches before the two Witnesses'
Faith in God the dear Saviour who took on the likeness of men:
Becoming obedient to death, even the death of the Cross
The witnesses lie dead in the Street of the Great City
No Faith is in all the Earth: the Book of God is trodden underfoot:
He sent his two Servants Whitefield & Wesley; were they Prophets
Or were they Idiots of Madmen? Show us Miracles!
Can you have greater Miracles than these? Men who devote
Their whole life's comfort to intire scorn & injury & death
Awake thou sleeper on the Rock of Eternity Albion awake
The trumpet of Judgment hath twice sounded: all Nations are awake
But thou art still heavy and dull: Awake Albion awake! 10
This passage is significant because it crystallizes Blake's attitudes towards Wesley both as a historical person and as part of the poet's mythology. The speaker of this passage, Rintrah, refers to one of the most important Methodist doctrines immediately before mentioning the two major Methodist leaders by name. He speaks of the fallacy of denying "the value of the Saviour's Blood," as one of the major sins of deist thought. This reference is significantly coupled with repetitions of the phrases "the Lamb of God" and "the Divine Lamb" which refer to the doctrine of vicarious sacrifice which Blake mentions in connection with the supposed death of the two Servants. It is natural to infer in this case that Blake derived his idea of the value of sacrifice from Methodism." Rintrah is the first of the sons of Los and Enitharmon, one of four who are described as "Rintrah fierce, and Palambron mild & piteous / Theotormon filled with care, Bronion loving Science" (Milton 24.11-12). When Rintrah raises Whitefield and Palambron Wesley, the varying characters of the two historical servants are functions of the variation in the personalities of their respective sponsors. 12 The differentiation between Wesley and Whitefield on the basis of wrath and gentleness is an accurate reflection of their historical characters. Wesley was steadfast in maintaining that he had no desire to break with the Church of England, and in fact remained a minister in it to the end of his life, never eager to help the Methodists withdraw from the older church. 13 On the other hand, Whitefield was often openly in defiance of the church establishment from the beginning of his ministry. In holding meetings in Bristol during March of 1709 for the coal miners and factory workers who were largely ignored by the Established Church, Whitefield defied the Bishop of Bristol and his council who ordered him to stop preaching in a diocese where he had no license or face suspension and excommunication. Whitefield ignored this order as he ignored others like it many times and soon thereafter broke definitively with the Church of England. Thus, the historical Whitefield amply deserved the fiery character Blake attributed to him as the servant of Rintrah, while Wesley was accurately portrayed under the milder character of a follower of Palambron.
The inclusion of the historical persons Wesley and Whitefield is an obvious sign of a deep affinity between the ideas of John Wesley and those of William Blake. This affinity is especially strong in three areas: first, ascribing man's limited physical powers to the Fall; second, determining the process man must undergo to attain spiritual salvation; and finally, describing the effects of salvation on man. One of the most striking aspects of Blake's vision of the Fall is that it is as much physical as it is spiritual. In the third plate of Milton, Blake summarizes Urizen's role in man's fall exactly as it is portrayed in The Book of Urizen and The Four Zoas. In Blake's Fall, all the senses become limited, "stony hard" (Milton, 3:9) and as a result are capable of receiving only limited impressions:
Ah weak & wide astray! Ah shut in narrow doleful forms
Creeping in reptile flesh upon the bosom of the ground
The Eye of Man a little narrow orb closed up & dark
Scarcely beholding the great light conversion with the Void
The Ear, a little shell in small solutions shutting out
All melodies & comprehending only Discord and Harmony
The Tongue a little moisture fills, a little food it cloys
A little sound it utters & its cries are faintly heard
Then brings forth Moral Virtue the cruel Virgin Babylon
Can Such an Eye judge of the stars? & looking thro its tubes
Measure the sunny rays that point their spears on Udanadan
Can such an Ear filled with the vapours of the yawning pit
Judge of the pure melodious harp struck by a hand divine?
Can such closed Nostrils feel a joy? or tell of autumn fruits
When grapes & figs burst their covering to the joyful air
Can such a Tongue boast of the living waters? or take in
Ought but the Vegetable Ratio & loathe the faint delight
Can such gross Lips perceive? alas! folded within themselves
They touch not ought but pallid turn & tremble at every wind
(Milton 5.19-36)
It is not surprising that such limited senses can be reformed only by a miracle, the inspired words of a prophet, or an inspired act like Milton's, total self-sacrifice to attain union with the divine. The repetitions of "little" in the first half of the quotation and of "such" in the second half show that it is the limited physical powers of the lips, eye, ear and tongue which are responsible for the feebleness of these organs. These limitations were created by the fall of man implied by the fall of Urizen or Reason. In the second half of the quotation, the limited nature of the sense organs is repeatedly balanced against the beauties of eternal vision which they are incapable of appreciating. "Can such an ear . . . judge of the pure melodious harp struck by a hand divine?" (Milton 5:28-29). Even before the questions are answered (35-36) the response is already supplied in the reader's mind. The senses of the fallen man are almost hopelessly limited to the "Vegetable Ratio" and only a miracle can free them to perceive eternally.15
In describing man's fall in "Sermon LXII," John Wesley puts himself along with Blake among those who believe that the mental and physical consequences of the Fall are simultaneous, interrelated, and equal in importance:
Such was man with regard to his corporeal part, as he came out of the hands of his Maker. But since he sinned, he is not only dust, but mortal, corruptible dust. And by sad experience we find, that this "corruptible body presses down the soul." It very frequently hinders the soul in its operations; and, at best serves it very imperfectly. Yet the soul cannot dispense with its service imperfect as it is: for an embodied spirit can not form one thought, but by the mediation of its spirit; but the act of a spirit connected with a body and playing upon a set of material keys. It cannot possibly therefore, make any better music than the nature and states of its instruments allow it. Hence every disorder of the body, especially of the parts more immediately subservient to thinking, lay an almost insuperable bar in the way of its thinking justly.... Mistake, as well as ignorance, is, in our present state, inseparable from humanity.... And by the mistake which is occasioned by the defect of my bodily organs, I am naturally led so to do, [to err]. Such is the present condition of human nature: of a mind dependent on a mortal body. 16
The repetitions of "complete" and "imperfect" in the first part of the quotation highlight Wesley's concern with the fall of the body which accompanied man's spiritual fall. The middle of the quotation uses a musical metaphor as does Blake for a different purpose. The poet emphasizes the perception of music through limited organs while Wesley emphasizes man's actions, calling the human spirit a musician, forever condemned to playing on the imperfect piano of the body. Wesley's pianist of the spirit must have an instrument to play his music however fallible or remain mute, and Blake's fallen man is condemned to the limited perceptions of a narrow hardened ear. Both men are aware of man's limitations though they emphasize different aspects of those limitations.
Both Blake and Wesley strongly emphasize the limitations of the body as implied in the words "hardened" or "petrified," a narrow limited body imprisoning the spirit in the hard walls of its caverns. In Blake's vision of the creation of the human body the eyes are "two little Orbs & closed in two little caves" (Milton 3.14). The ears are corrupted as they grow, "Two Ears in close volutions? Shot spiring out in the deep darkness & petrified as they grew" (Milton 3.17-18). Wesley also saw the process of human life as a petrification, hardening and narrowing unto death:
God has indeed provided for the execution of his own decree, in the very principles of our nature. It is well known the human body, when it comes into the world, consists of innumerable membranes exquisitely thin, that are filled with circulating fluids, to which the solid parts bear a very small proportion. Into the tubes, composed of these membranes, nourishment must be continually infused otherwise life cannot continue, but will come to an end almost as soon as it is begun. And suppose this nourishment to be liquid, which, as it flows through these fine canals, continually enlarges them in all their dimensions; yet it contains innumerable solid particles, which continually adhere to the inner surface of the vessels through which they flow; so that in the same proportion as any vessel is enlarged, it is stiffened also. Thus the body grows firmer, as it grows larger, from infancy to manhood. In twenty, five and twenty, or thirty years, it attains its full measure of firmness.... As age increases, fewer and fewer of the vessels are pervious, and capable of transmitting the vital streams; except the larger ones, most of which are lodged within the trunk of the body. In extreme old age, the arteries themselves, the grand instrument of circulation, by the continual apposition of earth, become hard, and as it were bony, till, having lost the power of contracting themselves, they can no longer propel the blood, even through the largest channels, in consequence of which, death naturally ensues. Thus are the seeds of death sown in our very nature! Thus from the very hour when we first appear on the stage of life, we are travelling towards death; we are preparing, whether we will or no, to return to the dust from when we came. 17
Wesley's vision of human life petrifying to a close was based on the science of his day, nonetheless it is startlingly parallel to Blake's vision of the eye and ear hardening in their creation until in frustration Albion "enraged & stifled without & within: in terror & woe, he threw his/right arm to the north, his left arm to the south, & his Feet / Stampd the nether Abyss in trembling & howling & dismay? And a seventh Age passed over & a state of dismal woe" (Milton 3.24-27).
Faced as they were with the physical and spiritual fall of man, it is not surprising that both Blake and Wesley demand a new birth as a preface to salvation. In "To the Deists," the introduction to the third chapter of Jerusalem, Blake condemns those who preach the essential goodness of natural man:
You O Deists profess yourselves the Enemies of Christianity; and you are so: you are also the Enemies of the Human Race & of Universal Nature. Man is born a Spectre of Satan & is altogether an Evil, & requires a New Selflhood continually & must continually be changed into his direct Contrary. But your Greek Philosophy (which is a remnant of Druidism) teaches that Man is Righteous in his Vegetated Spectre; an Opinion of fatal & accursed consequence to Man, as the Ancients saw plainly by Revelation to the intire abrogation of Experimental Theory, and many believed what they saw, and Prophecied of Jesus (Jerusalem. 52).
This quotation contains two ideas important to the attainment of salvation in Wesleyan thought: the necessity of salvation to man sunk in corruption; and that attainment of perfection, while difficult, is not impossible. 18 The contrary to sin, perfection, can be achieved, but both Blake's Milton and Wesley know it is a long and difficult struggle.
As has been shown previously, Wesley's sermons were eloquent on the subject of man's corruption, but the founder of Methodism could be equally eloquent on the possibility of man's redemption. He constantly calls his hearers to true religion, emotional union with God even though a complete and constant union with God in this life is very difficult to attain. 19 To John Wesley, such perfection is the possession of true "religion" which "is a participation in the divine nature; the life of God in the soul of man; Christ formed in the heart; Christ in thee, the hope of glory; 'happiness and holiness; heaven begun upon earth' a kingdom of God within thee." 20
Such salvation is "Christ in thee," a union with God which drives out the old man, feeble and spiritually corrupt. To Wesley, the primary condition necessary to justification, the first step of salvation, is faith. 21 Blake would understand this insistence on faith. Milton's decision to go down to "Eternal Death" at the close of the first book of Milton (14) is an enormous act of pure faith in the saving power of the expected Jesus. Significantly, Milton makes his decision after the Bard who had been praising the "Divine Humanity," Jesus, "terrify'd took refuge in Milton's bosom" (14.9). In this way, Milton acquires the Bard's faith in Christ and calls, "When will the Resurrection come; to deliver the sleeping body/ From corruptibility: O when Lord Jesus wilt thou come?" (14.17-18) Milton combines his own faith with the Bard's and decides to take the risk of death once again in the chance of attaining a permanent salvation. He risks losing his life in order to gain it.
Blake and Milton knew that faith is a matter of the inspired heart rather than of the intellect. The brain is the Idiot Questioner that misleads man into the eternal death-filled round of queries, queries that lack the single certainty of faith. The intellect is part of the "warlike selfhood, contradicting and blaspheming" which Milton fears will trap him in the bonds of death when Christ comes again to judge the world. It is impossible to overemphasize the importance Blake places on casting off the old man, the satanic self composed of old religious law, memory and old ideas. It is to escape that self that Milton announces to the Assembly:
I will arise and look forth for the morning of the grave.
I will go down to the sepulcher to see if morning breaks!
I will go down to self annihilation and eternal death,
Lest the Last Judgement come & find me unannibilate
And I be seiz'd & giv'n into the hands of my own Selfhood.
.........................................................
What do I here before the Judgement? without my Emanation?
With the daughters of memory, & not with the daughters of
inspiration (?)
I in my Selflhood am that Satan: I am that Evil One!
He is my Spectre! in my obedience to loose him from my Hells
To calm the Hells, my Furnaces, I go to Eternal Death
(14.20-4, 28-32)
The repetition of "I will go down" and "I will" emphasize Milton's determination to escape his satanic selfhood. He knows that he must die to opinion, intellect and judgment before he can reject his old Self and acquire the new regenerated life in union with Jesus, the "Divine Humanity." Wesley also realized that the "daughters of memory," factual knowledge, are no help in ascertaining whether or not an individual is truly in possession of salvation:
Neither does religion consist in orthodoxy, or right opinions; which, although they are not properly outward things, are not in the heart, but the understanding. A man may be orthodox in every point-he may not only espouse right opinions but zealously defend them against all opposers; . . . and yet it is possible he may have no religion at all . . . he may be almost as orthodox-as the devil, . . . and may, all the while, be as great a stranger as he to the religion of the heart. This alone is religion, truly so called, this alone is in the sight of God of great price. The apostle sums it all up in three particulars, "righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost."22
Both Blake and Wesley realize that intellectual orthodoxy is not incompatible with the diabolic, that the heart is the primary standard for judging the force of an individual's spiritual life. The wording of the above quotation from one of Wesley's sermons contrasts "orthodox" with "religion" and "religion of the heart." The dash in the sixth line of the quotation was probably delivered as a pause. One can imagine the surprise of the listeners when Wesley yoked orthodoxy with the devil. Ascribing to the devil the role of exemplar of orthodoxy is a way of emphasizing the primary of the "religion of the heart" over theological knowledge and the primary proponents of such knowledge, the ministers of the English Church. For both Blake and Wesley, the heart stands at the door of salvation and only the heart unhampered by the sceptical brain can cross the threshold.
For the complete and cosmogenic results of salvation in Blake, one must turn from Milton to Jerusalem. However, Blake does present an introduction to his final doctrine of salvation in the Beulah section of the second book. Beulah is the place where war ceases, a rest from the strife between the forces of creativity and repression, generated by Eden, and symbolic of the final marriage between Ololon and Milton. 23 The beauty of Beulah contains the expanding moment, with its almost infinite power to save, that provides one of the major points of union between the doctrines of salvation of Blake and Wesley. To Wesley, the beauty of God and to Blake the beauty of God's creation stand at the knife point where eternity begins. From this point, one may pass over easily into eternal time, salvation, and union with God.
This vast change to eternity is to Wesley, a change from "darkness to light," "from death to life." The sudden vision of glory is the "open, uncovered, face" of God "the evil now being taken away." It comes in a moment and a moment is sufficient to change man into the "Glorious image wherein thou wast created, . . . the same image, from glory to glory, by the Spirit of God." 24 An account of a factual occurrence of this amazing spiritual transformation at the knife point of eternity is found in the Journal of John Wesley for Monday, January 1, 1739. The scene is the same Fetter Lane Chapel where the Blake parents were probably members:
Mr. Hall, Kinchin, Ingraham, Whitefield, Huchins and my brother Charles were present at our love feast in Fetter Lane, with about sixty of our brethren. About three in the morning, as we were continuing instant in prayer, the power of God came mightily upon us, insomuch that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell to the ground. As soon as we were recovered a little from that awe and amazement at the presence of His majesty we broke out with one voice, "We praise thee, O God; we acknowledge thee to he the Lord!" 25
The use of the phrase "the power of God came mightily upon us" indicates that the spiritual transformation was a matter of a very few minutes. The experience of salvation comes in the midst of normal worship for it is comparatively easily attained by ordinary people in ordinary life and requires no particular rites or specialized knowledge. The people's reaction, their praise to God and falling to the ground indicates the overwhelming nature of their feelings. In this moment men's eyes expand to see worlds of the spirit and of eternity to which they were blind before. The natural eye can not see this, only the Holy Spirit can expand the senses in the necessary way. 26 A selection from Wesley's sermons will show what importance he placed on such spiritual experiences; they were the touchstones of a true faith:
This repentance, this faith, this peace, joy, love, this change from glory to glory, is what the wisdom of the world has voted to be madness, mere enthusiasm, utter distraction. But thou, O man of God, regard them not; be thou moved by none of these things. Thou knowest in whom thou hast believed. 27
The sentence structure of this selection opposes "peace, joy, and love" to "madness, mere enthusiasm, utter distraction." In the opposition of the triads, one the opinion of the inspired heart, the other the voice of the orthodox detractors, it is easy to see that the heart is the victor, for it alone is the judge of what it finds true from personal experience. The expanded moment of eternity, the change implied in the word "repentance" is an observable fact while the wisdom of the world is a "vote." Considering the universal corruption of elections, which included the disenfranchisement of more than seven-eighths of the population on the eve of the Reform Bill and the selection of representatives at the whim of the local aristocrat, the use of the allusion to voting is subtly damning. 28 The wisdom of the world like the voter's decision is based not on truth, but on the selfish desires of the establishment, religious or political. Thus, the truth of the moment of glory shines bright in the midst of the corruption of the opposition. Wesley speaks of the work of salvation as an expansion like the physical expansion that takes place when a baby grows into an adult. The saved individual receives the "sincere milk of the word and grows thereby," becoming a "perfect man" in the faith of Christ. 29 Wesley expresses the contrast between the moment of acceptance of God and the moment preceding it as the difference between "sleep" and "awareness" and between bondage to sin and freedom. Both of these contrasts express the radical difference made by the acceptance of faith. Wesley asks "Have you heaven in your heart" or are you "overwhelmed with sorrow, and fear," calling his hearers to the expansion of soul implied in holding all of heaven in one's heart. 30
To Blake, eternity is also a wondrous expansion in the dimensions of ordinary human life. Eternity and everyday life meet at natural beauty, for the right perception of this beauty can help man to cross over into eternity as suddenly as the worshippers in the Fetter Lane Chapel passed over into their vision of God: "Thou perceivest the Flowers put forth their precious Odours/ And none can tell how from so small a center comes such sweets/Forgetting that within that Center Eternity expands" (31.46-8). As in Wesley's doctrine of salvation, the individual moment is overwhelmingly powerful. It renews all the time past and enables one to live perfectly in the future. One can cross over into eternity at any time, but it is particularly easy to do so when one is conscious of the beauty of God's creation:
There is a Moment in each Day that Satan cannot find
Nor can his Watch Fiends find it, but the Industrious find
This moment & it multiply, & when it once is found
It renovates every Moment of the day if rightly placed,
In this moment Ololon descended to Los & Enitharmon
Unseen beyond the Mundane Shell Southward in Milton's track.
Just in this Moment when the morning odours rise abroad
And first from the Wild Thyme, stands a Fountain in a rock
Of crystal flowing into two Streams, one flow thro Golgonooza
and thro Beulah to Eden beneath Los's western Wall
The other flows thro the Aerial Void & all the Churches
Meeting again in Golgonooza beyond Satan's Seat
The Wild Thyme is Los's Messenger to Eden, a mighty Demon
Terrible deadly & poisonous his presence in Ulro dark
Therefore he appears only a small Root creeping in grass
Covering over the Rock of Odours his bright purple mantle
Beside the Fount above the Larks nest in Golgonooza
Luvah slept here in death-here in Luvah's empty Tomb
Ololon sat beside this Fountain on the Rock of Odours
(35 42-60).
In this moment when all eternity can be renovated, Ololon, Milton's feminine emanation, takes a vital step towards union with him, she descends in Milton's path to where he lies on his death couch beside Los and Enitharmon.
In making this descent Ololon is showing her willingness to sacrifice herself in order to gain eternal life and reunion with Milton. At this moment, when the preparations are being made for Milton's ultimate salvation the earth is at its most beautiful and all preceptions are heightened. "The morning odours rise abroad," above all from the wild thyme which with lark is a symbol of perfect perception, the gate to eternity. The wild thyme is a demon but only to Satan who wants human perception to remain narrowed and the senses to remain locked. Describing the wild thyme in this way is an ironic shift to Satan's mode of perception (54-7) as a means of expressing the contrast to ideal perception. The fountain, the crystal stream, is not only a part of perceived beauty, but a reference to the "waters of life" (Milton is to bathe in immediately before his reunion with Ololon) (40.1). This one place is well suited to be the site of the moment of perception for here the thyme grows, here the water springs, and here the lark has built her nest. Immediately following this passage the Lark starts its journey to meet the twenty-seven other Larks who will be the messengers to the churches. From this lovely place which includes the water and the thyme along with the lark, all the symbols of eternal perception, the creative idea will begin its series of reascensions to perfection. The thyme and the lark reappear immediately after the Six-fold Emanation's union with Milton and Jesus' reunion with mankind, "Immediately the Lark mounted with a loud trill from Felphams Vale/ And the Wild thyme from Wimbletons green & impurpled Hills" (42.29-30). These two symbols of perception are harbingers of the "Human Harvest" of man which is to come and symbolically include all the work of God in time and eternity, the work which begins in the moment when the senses expand to perceive the sound of the lark and the scent of the wild thyme.
This vision at the moment of expansion is not self-centered but God and ultimately man-centered. Again and again Wesley states that the vision of God becomes union with God and results in an increased love of neighbor: 31
The necessary fruit of this love of God is the love of our neighbour; of every soul which God hath made; not excepting our enemies; not excepting those who are now "despitefully using and persecuting us;" a love, whereby we love every man as ourselves; as we love our own souls." 32
This union of God and man and man and man is expressed through the image of the vine and the branches, "These, 'who have redemption through his blood,' . . . are joined unto the Lord in one Spirit. They are ingrafted unto him, as branches into the vine. They are united." 33 A practical result of this spirit of union is the experience in Fetter Lane when all present praise God with one voice.
In Milton one of the results of the right perception of eternity, is in addition to Milton's union with his female emanation, Jesus' union with mankind, "Jesus stept & walked forth/ From Felphams Vale clothed in Clouds of blood, to enter into/ Albions Bosom" (42.19-21). As a result of the eternal vision, a man can sympathize even with the lowly fly and see in it an analogy of himself:
Seest thou the little winged fly, smaller than a grain of sand?
It has a heart like thee; a brain open to heaven & hell.
Withinside wondrous & expansive; its gates are not clos'd
I hope thine are not: hence it clothes itself in rich array;
Hence thou art cloth'd with human beauty O thou mortal man.
Seek not thy heavenly father then beyond the skies: (20.26-31)
Even the brain of a fly can be the tiny center which expands to reveal eternity if rightly seen, hence the warning (28) that the brain of man must be as open as that of the fly. The final line of the quotation (31) contains still another warning that eternity opens up in the here and now, in small real things like the fly not in some vaguely realized place beyond the earth. Because anything here on earth can open the vision of eternity to the poet-man, he cannot ignore any being human or animal. Thus, in the perception of eternity all created things are one, all share humanity, the divine Humanity of Jesus. Such is the power of the sympathetic eternal mind that it can even perceive sympathetically one of the satanic forces of the world. After wrestling with Urizen who has tried to freeze his brain with the cold water of his logic, Milton is able to perceive his enemy well enough to give the great gift of a form:
But Milton took of the red clay of Succoth, moulding it with care
Between his palms; and filling up the furrows of many tears
Beginning at the feet of Urizen, and on the bones
Creating new flesh on the Demon cold, and building him,
As with new clay a Human form in this Valley of Beth Peor.
The fact that this is a creative act, not submission to Urizen can be seen in Blake's use of a place name. Succoth furnished clay for casting metal ornaments for Solomon's temple (I Kings VII,46). Only divine vision can create a great work of art, a temple or a human form.
To both Blake and Wesley, salvation is the response of the heart. This response may be either to God's creation in Blake or to pure love of God in Wesley. After the movement of the heart is obeyed, man passes over to eternity, stepping from this narrow round of ordinary fallen human life into the infinite world of salvation. This expanding moment is the primary effect of salvation. As a result of such a passage from darkness to light, from petrification to perception, man is united with all other men in the divine man, Jesus Christ.
Notes
1Deborah Dorfman, Blake in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Yale University Press, 1969), p. 47.
2Kenneth Scott Latourette, The Nineteenth Century in Europe (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959), pp. 335-36.
3Ibid, 257-58.
4S. Foster Damon, A Blake Dichonary (Providence: Brown University Press, 1965), p. 444.
5Albert Edward Bailey, The Gospel in Hymns (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1950), p. 88.
6Martha England, "Blake and the Hymns of Charles Wesley," Bulletin of the New York Public Library, 60.
7Margaret Ruth Lowery, Windows of the Morning (New York: Archon Books), p. 15.
8Maximin Piette, John Wesley and the Evolution of Protestantism (New York: Sheed & Ward. 1937). DD. 295-96. 307-8.
9Ibid., pp. 294-96, 307-8.
10William Blake, The Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. David V. Erdman (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1965), p. 117, plate 22, 11.52-62, Plate 23,11.1-5. Further citations from Milton will be from this edition and will be included in the text in Darentheses.
11Frederick C. Gill, The Romantic Movement and Methodism (London: The Epworth Press, 1937), p. 149.
12Damon, The Blake Dictionary, p. 321.
13Latourette, The Nineteenth Century in Europe, p. 335.
14Piette, John Wesley, p. 346.
15This vision of the Fall as primarily physical with a spiritual decline as a consequence is widely divergent from conventional ideas particularly as epitomized in Paradise Lost. Both Paradise Lost and Genesis hold the first and most important consequences of the Fall to have been spiritual. In Paradise Lost (9.1009-59) the relationship between Adam and Eve deteriorates into alternate lust and quarreling while in Genesis (5.7-20) Adam and Eve show their sin first by being ashamed of their nakedness and secondly by being reluctant to confront God openly as had been their custom. Only later when God judges them does He decree that their bodies will be changed as a punishment for sin; they will be made vulnerable to death.
16John Wesley, The Works of theRev. John Wesley, A.M. II (New York: Eaton and Mains), 34.
17Ibid., II, 35.
18William R. Cannon, The Theology of John Wesley (New York: Abingdon Press, 1956), pp. 201-43.
19Charles Wesley thought he knew only one person who had attained Christian perfection in this life, his children's nurse. Blake spoke of himself as one who had attained perfection at the cost of great strife. In a letter to Mr. Butts written shortly before the writing of Milton on November 22, 1802 he calls himself a "champion," one who had "travel'd thro' Perils & Darkness," strong in Jesus who had "conquer'd, and shall still Go on Conquering." The Letters of William Blake, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), p. 509f.
20Wesley, Sermons, I, p. 64.
21Ibid, p. 113.
22Ibid., pp. 6-7.
23Harold Bloom, Blake's Apocalypse (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1963), p. 341.
24Wesley, Sermons, I, p. 209.
25piette, John Wesley, p. 331.
26Wesley, Sermons, I, p. 345.
27Ibid., p. 152.
28See D. F. Macdonald, The Age of Transition (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1967), pp. 44-5 and E. L. Woodward, The Age of Reform 1815-1870 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938), pp. 23-28.
29John Wesley, Sermons, I, p. 34.
30Ibid, p. 190.
31Ibid., p. 161.
32Ibid., p. 375.
33Ibid, p. 160.
Edited by Brian Seidel
