SATAN & DEISM

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Jerusalem
Plate 26

Part of what Blake meant by Satan can be understood in the light of what he said about Deism. When the philosophers of the enlightenment discarded orthodox Christianity they created a structure to hold their own religion, Blake called it Deism. Also Blake referred to it as the Synagogue of Satan because the traditional God of the Jews and the Christians was replaced by the God of This World, whom Blake recognized as Satan. Some of the characteristics are named in this passage.

The Deists:

1.) Taught that man is righteous by nature,

2.) Preached vengeance for sins of others,

3.) Caused war

4.) Did not practice forgiveness

Satan, to Blake, is known by his works and his works are seen in his followers. The follower of Satan is the self-righteous person who seeks to punish those who don't measure up to his standards, who accuses others and exonerates himself for the same offenses, who considers forgiving others a sign of weakness, and who would rather see the suffering of war than the blessings of peace.

Introduction to Chapter 3 of Jerusalem, To the Deists

Jerusalem, Plate 52, (E 200)
 "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 or Satan & is altogether
an Evil, & requires a New Selfhood 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.
  Man must & will have Some Religion; if he has not the Religion
of Jesus, he will have the Religion of Satan, & will erect the
Synagogue of Satan. calling the Prince of this World, God; and
destroying all who do not worship Satan under the Name of God. 
Will any one say: Where are those who worship Satan under the
Name of God! Where are they? Listen! Every Religion that Preaches
Vengeance for Sins the Religion of the Enemy & Avenger; and not
the Forgiver of Sin, and their God is Satan, Named by the Divine
Name   Your Religion O Deists: Deism, is the Worship of the God
of this World by the means of what you call Natural Religion and
Natural Philosophy, and of Natural Morality or
Self-Righteousness, the Selfish Virtues of the Natural Heart. 
This was the Religion of the Pharisees who murderd Jesus.  Deism
is the same & ends in the same.

 Voltaire Rousseau Gibbon Hume. charge the Spiritually Religious
with Hypocrisy! but how a Monk or a Methodist either, can be a
Hypocrite: I cannot concieve.  We are Men of like passions with
others & pretend not to be holier than others: therefore, when a
Religious Man falls into Sin, he ought not to be calld a
Hypocrite: this title is more properly to be given to a Player
who falls into Sin; whose profession is Virtue & Morality & the
making Men Self-Righteous.  Foote in calling Whitefield,
Hypocrite: was himself one: for Whitefield pretended not to be
holier than others: but confessed his Sins before all the World;
Voltaire! Rousseau! You cannot escape my charge that you are
Pharisees & Hypocrites, for you are constantly talking of the
Virtues of the Human Heart, and particularly of your own, that
you may accuse others & especially the Religious, whose errors,
you by this display of pretended Virtue, chiefly design to
expose.  Rousseau thought Men Good by Nature; he found them Evil
& found no friend.  Friendship cannot exist without Forgiveness
of Sins continually.  The Book written by Rousseau calld his
Confessions is an apology & cloke for his sin & not a confession.
  But you also charge the poor Monks & Religious with being the
causes of War: while you acquit & flatter the Alexanders &
Caesars, the Lewis's & Fredericks: who alone are its causes & its
actors.  But the Religion of Jesus, Forgiveness of Sin, can never
be the cause of a War nor of a single Martyrdom.
  Those who Martyr others or who cause War are Deists, but never
can be Forgivers of Sin.  The Glory of Christianity is, To
Conquer by Forgiveness.  All the Destruction therefore, in
Christian Europe has arisen from Deism, which is Natural
Religion."             

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In William Blake's Jerusalem, Minna Doskow, explains why Blake used the philosophers of the Enlightenment to represent the forces which bound man to materialism:

"The error of the Deists begins, Blake tells us, by teaching 'that Man is Righteous in his Vegetated Spectre.' We have only to look at Rousseau's praise of natural man or the writings of Locke and Hume, praised by Voltaire, which glorify man as a natural creature of sense and reason to find the truth of Blake's statement. For Locke man is simply the sum of his sense impressions and his reflections on them. Similarly for Hume man is 'nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions which succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity and are in perpetual flux and movement.' Here is Blake's 'Vegetated Spectre' or merely natural man whom the Daughters of Albion circumscribe, bind, and sacrifice to their own ends - the Deistic conception of man bound by purely physical nature. Through their theories of sensation Locke and his followers have 'bound Englishmen to dead nature and imprisoned them in the cavern of their material bodies,' a process which together with its consequences, is summarized in the dedication and explored in the chapter." (Page 34)