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Blake suffered intensely from the subtle
forms of economic oppression and railed against them. His anger sparked
the most searching critique of the restrictive structures of society and
of the psychic attributes associated with those structures.
Wesley lacked Blake's prophetic mind, but he had a concern for souls
that led his converts first to an elevation of character and soon to an
elevation of economic station. In the simplest natural terms Wesley's
converts replaced drinking and gambling with praying and singing
hymns--and became prosperous, just as the Quakers had done in earlier
generations.
Wesley held extremely conservative political views, but unlike most
Tories he loved the poor. He devoted his life to helping them raise
their circumstances, all of course a byproduct of his concern for their
souls! While Blake denounced and railed against the social evils of the
day, Wesley picked up one by one the fallen members of the underclass
and instilled in them a means of lifting themselves up into the middle
class.
He taught them for example to "gain all you can, save all you can, give
all you can". The admonition won sufficient adherents to make a
tremendous contribution to the humanitarian movement. Blake wrote about
the prisons of the mind; Wesley systematically visited real prisons his
entire life and organized helping institutions to address the needs of
prisoners and to ameliorate their distress.
Wesley had a life changing message and organizational genius as well.
Through his religious message and his Methodist societies he contributed
significantly to the relief of economic distress and oppression. In
contrast Blake's message was virtually incomprehensible to the kinds of
people most responsive to Wesley's. In fact it is incomprehensible to
most people today because it requires a level of consciousness
impossible for the materially minded.
Wesley and Blake may have been the two greatest men produced by England
in the 18th Century. The work of Wesley and his fellow evangelists had
immediate and far reaching consequences in the life of the world. For
example his preachers exercised a great civilizing influence on the
American frontier. The Methodist Church today represents the best of the
American way, theologically and socially enlightened beyond the
generality of the population.
Blake's work in contrast was far ahead of his time. It had no immediate
visible influence, yet it offers the best hope of the future for the
English speaking world to break out of the strait jacket of dead
materialism. The present age needs a spiritual revival as desperately as
did Wesley's.
But the Wesleyan style of revival has less to offer the modern mind than
it did to the 18th Century underclass. The Blakean vision has a great
deal to offer to the best minds of this century, the relatively few
minds capable of an individual form of spiritual creativity. The mind of
Blake offers the strongest possible protection against the mindless
conformity that threatens the human race.
Although Blake did have a copy of a Wesleyan hymnbook, we lack evidence
of direct first hand experience with a Methodist group. Most certainly
he would have found the discipline distasteful. But Methodism was one of
the rare forms of English religious life that Blake had good words for.
In the prose introduction to Chapter Three of 'Jerusalem' he defended
Methodists and Monks against what he deemed to be the hypocritical
attacks of Voltaire and the other philosophies. He named Wesley and
Whitefield as the two witnesses of Revelation 11.3, the archetypal image
of the rejected and despised prophet of God (cf Milton 22:61; Erdman
118). He grouped Whitefield with St. Teresa and other gentle souls "who
guide the great Wine press of Love".
Jerusalem, Plate 72, (E 227)
"And the Four Gates of Los surround the Universe Within and
Without; & whatever is visible in the Vegetable Earth, the same
Is visible in the Mundane Shell; reversd in mountain & vale
And a Son of Eden was set over each Daughter of Beulah to guard
In Albions Tomb the wondrous Creation: & the Four-fold Gate
Towards Beulah is to the South[.] Fenelon, Guion, Teresa,
Whitefield & Hervey, guard that Gate; with all the gentle Souls
Who guide the great Wine-press of Love; Four precious stones that Gate:"
To the best of our knowledge Blake belonged to no organized church. We
do know of two groups which might generically qualify as churches, using
the word its broadest possible sense. The first gathered around the
radical publisher, Joseph Johnson, Blake's primary employer and the
friend of Mary Wollstonecraft, Joseph Priestly, Richard Price, Thomas
Paine and other radical intellectuals. While the conventional church
exists as a primary bulwark of the status quo, Joseph Johnson's group by
and large conceived of Christ as a revolutionary. Dissenters of a
variety of persuasions, they were united by their awareness of the need
for social and political change. They considered this the primary agenda
of any truly spiritual communion.
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Blake was in accord with these ideas. The Johnson group nurtured
him and provided the communal support which we generally associate with
church groups. The second group gathered around Blake in his last
decade. It was made up of young artists, some of them devout. They
looked to Blake for aesthetic and spiritual guidance and provided him
the communal support that lent grace to his last years.
After Blake's Moment of Grace around 1800 he might have joined a
church could have found one whose primary doctrine was the forgiveness
of sins. But like Milton before him and Lincoln after him he never
discovered a church that met his qualifications.
Anyone who loves Blake and has had a happier experience of the
church could wish for him more in the way of community. Alienated from
the worshiping community by its partial theology and partial practice,
he was confined to his own visions and the nurture he could find at the
outer fringes of the church. In addition he learned from the Christian
classics of the ages, particularly the off beat ones. St. Teresa was a
favorite. We know little or nothing of how the Ranter tradition came
down to him.
All of these are elements of the Universal Church upon which Blake drew
and to which he belonged. Blessed with a worshiping fellowship beyond
that of his wife, his lot might have been happier and his witness
plainer to others.
Even so the church is fortunate to have his contribution. Isaiah
and Jeremiah, not to mention Jesus, also suffered alienation from their
communities. At the deepest level none of the four men rejected the
church, but rather the church rejected them. Blake was too deeply
attached to the priesthood of the believer to be able to submit to any
spiritual authority politically assigned: Let every man be "King and
Priest in his own house". In the words of Foster Damon "The Church
Universal was the only church that Blake recognized. Its doctrine is the
Everlasting Gospel, its congregation the Brotherhood of Man, its symbol
the Woman in the Wilderness (which he pictured), its architecture Gothic."
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