ABSTRACT
In William Blake's time Anglican Christianity was dominated by Deism, or 'natural religion', which denies revelation and bases belief in God upon reasonable deduction from the phenomena of nature. What the Deists really believed in was science; their successors are our own humanists, most of whom have dispensed with deity altogether. Blake's lifelong mental fight was against Deism. The humanity Blake asks us to adore is not the 'phantom of earth and water' of the materialists, but the 'express image of God'. Jesus with a snub nose seems outrageous until we realize that Blake is affirming that every individual human face reflects the image of God. Blake never speaks of sin and repentance, but always of doubt, unconsciousness of the inner worlds, unbelief. Blake was vigorously anti-clerical, seeing in the Churches of his day a worship of outer forms and the 'moral Christianity' of the selfhood; 'the outward ceremony is antichrist.' Self-rightousness was for him the greatest of sins.
