Between the best and the worst there are, you say, innumerable degrees—and you are right. But admit that I am right too in saying that the best and the worst differ only in one thing—in the object of their love.
Blake: “Would to God that every one would consider this.”
It was considered and maintained by Swedenborg, Boehme, Fénelon, and constantly by St Catherine of Siena, who to the “God is Love” of St John added “Man is love also.”
Keep him at least three paces distant who hates bread, music, and the laugh of a child.
Blake: “The best in the book.”
He who adores an impersonal God has none, and without guide or rudder launches on an immense abyss that first absorbs his powers and next himself.
Blake: “Most superlatively beautiful, and most affectionately holy and pure. Would to God that all men would consider it.”
His faith in a personal God was his lifelong inspiration in religion and art. This must guard him against the charge of pantheism made against him by the Swedenborgian Garth Wilkinson and our fleshly poet Swinburne. Yet he never thought out his position clear of pantheism. Swedenborg worshipped a personal God and regarded man and nature as emanations from God removed by varying degrees. But no matter how many degrees, continuous or discrete, one removes ultimates from God, yet if they are essentially emanations from Him, they must be of the same substance, and this is pantheism. Catholic theology has grappled far more effectually with this ancient difficulty than either Swedenborg or Blake.
All abstraction is temporary folly.
Blake: “I once thought otherwise, but now I know it is truth.” Let those who confound mysticism with abstraction note this.