Plate 52

|The Spiritual States of
|the Soul are all Eternal  

Rahab is an       |   To the Deists.      |Distinguish between the

Eternal State                              Man, & his present State  

He never can be a Friend to the Human Race who is the Preacher
of Natural Morality or Natural Religion. he is a flatterer who
means to betray, to perpetuate Tyrant Pride & the Laws of that
Babylon which he foresees shall shortly be destroyed, with the
Spiritual and not the Natural Sword: He is in the State named
Rahab: which State must be put off before he can be the Friend of
Man.

You O Deists profess yourselves the Enemies of Christianity:
and you are so: you are also the Enemies of the Human Race and of
Universal Nature.  Man is born a Spectre or Satan and is altogether
an Evil, and requires a New Selfhood continually and 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 and 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 and 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 and 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 and Morality and 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 and 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
and found no friend.  Friendship cannot exist without Forgiveness
of Sins continually.  The Book written by Rousseau calld his
Confessions is an apology and cloke for his sin and not a confession.
But you also charge the poor Monks and Religious with being the
causes of War: while you acquit and flatter the Alexanders and
Caesars, the Lewis's and 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.                         

I saw a Monk of Charlemaine     Arise before my sight

I  talkd with the Grey Monk as we stood                       
in beams of infernal light

Plate 52

Gibbon arose with a lash of steel                            
And Voltaire with a wracking wheel
The Schools in clouds of learning rolld                      
Arose with War in iron and gold.

Thou lazy Monk they sound afar                               
In vain condemning glorious War                                
And in your Cell you shall ever dwell                        
Rise War and bind him in his Cell.

The blood. red ran from the Grey Monks side
His hands and feet were wounded wide
His body bent, his arms and knees         
Like to the roots of ancient trees

When Satan first the black bow bent
And the Moral Law from the Gospel rent
He forgd the Law into a Sword
And spilld the blood of mercys Lord.

Titus! Constantine!  Charlemaine!        
O Voltaire! Rousseau! Gibbon! Vain
Your Grecian Mocks and Roman Sword               
Against this image of his Lord!

For a Tear is an Intellectual thing;                      
And a Sigh is the Sword of an Angel King
And the bitter groan of a Martyrs woe                        
Is an Arrow from the Almighties Bow!
(Erdman 200-202)
***************************************
Notes:
 

In Chapter Three, To the Deists, Blake gave free rein to his life long hostility to Conventional Religion, which in upper classes at least boiled down to Deism.  They believed in a God who created the world (like a monstrous watch) and left it to function thereafter on its own; This God (in the far away) had little or no concern for his human creatures. This was about as opposite to Blake's faith and values as one could get.

So In Plate 52 he resorted to detailed reasoned arguments, pretty much tearing that faith to pieces.

In particular “Natural Morality or Natural Religion” was the way Deists described their faith.  

Quakers believed ‘there was that of God in every man’, and Blake (like Christians) might have said 'that of God in Redeemed men'.

Anyway Blake goes on to excoriate those who call Christians hypocrits:

“Man must and will have Some Religion; if he has not the Religion

of Jesus, he will have the Religion of Satan, and will erect the

Synagogue of Satan. calling the Prince of this World, God;”

There he describes Deism as the Religion of Satan.  

I know of nothing in Blake’s corpus more eloquent than the Monk of Charlemaine:

"O Voltaire! Rousseau! Gibbon! Vain

Your Grecian Mocks and Roman Sword               

Against this image of his Lord!

For a Tear is an Intellectual thing;                      

And a Sigh is the Sword of an Angel King

And the bitter groan of a Martyrs woe

Is an Arrow from the Almighties Bow!"