Blake's Heretical Forebears
Witness Against the Beast:
William Blake and the Moral Law
by E.P. Thompson, Cambridge UP
Eric Mader
British historian E.P. Thompson is best known for his 1963 masterpiece The
Making of the English Working Class,
a groundbreaking study of English artistans during the industrial revolution
and the most significant early work of what would come to be known as
"history from the bottom up."
Focussing on the losers of the industrial revolution and depending more
on documentary evidence than on the statistical methodology employed by other
historians, Thompson came to quite different conclusions from his peers. His new approach allowed him to bring
to life generations who'd previously been silenced by the very hopelessness of
their resistance to the New World Order taking shape in spite of them.
Throughout his career, Thompson stressed the value of literary works as
a source for historians, as he also, naturally for a Marxist, insisted on the
importance of history in the study of literature. His book on William Blake is a gem in this tradition of
historical criticism. Thompson
uses the documentary approach to shed a multifaceted light on this poet so
resistant to interpretation.
Witness Against the Beast
was published posthumously (Thompson died in 1993) and was the product of
decades of grappling with the origins of the poet's thought. Thompson was concerned mainly to
unearth Blake's "tradition": to address the question of where his
complex and often arcane symbolic system may have found its genesis and taken
root. Many traditions had been
proposed over the years by scholars, including neo-Platonism, Hermeticism, and
Behmenism, but none had really accounted for Blake's difference. How explain the persistence across
Blake's career of concerns and themes that were lacking in the supposed
sources? For one, could a
neo-Platonist have scoffed at Greek rationalism as Blake did, in lines such as:
The Gods of Greece & Egypt were Mathematical
Diagrams--See Plato's Works.
Rather than approach the poet in an academic way, by trying to fit him
into one of the major intellectual traditions, Thompson chose to narrow his
sights somewhat by researching Blake's milieu: by looking into the intellectual
and religious culture of the self-educated London artisan. In this way, Thompson came to identify
many of Blake's characteristic symbols as part of a common currency of
underground English theological discourse. The methodological point was clear enough: Why search
parallels in late antique philosophy when much of Blake's language echoed that
of fellow Londoners?
Thompson places Blake in the line of religious dissent that exploded
during the English Civil War of the previous century. His arguments for the identification are compelling. Blake's work, according to Thompson, is
in the tradition of Christian antinomianism, an antinomian in its Greek etymology being literally one who stands
"against the law." Among
the dissenting sects that rose at the time of the Civil War, many put great
stress on the belief that Christ's coming and sacrifice had annulled the Mosaic
Law. Those who had been saved by
Christ's blood, it was insisted, could no longer be called to account by any
moral or religious law; in fact any who stressed law in religion were not true
Christians but enemies of Christ.
Although in extreme forms such antinomianism was considered heresy, in
its more moderate form it can be found in no less than St. Paul himself:
The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ,
that we might be justified by faith.
But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a
schoolmaster. (Galatians 3:24-5)
In the generations before Blake, the English antinomian sects pushed
this Pauline idea to a degree the religious authorities could not
tolerate. Thompson convincingly argues
that Blake was of their ranks:
What must . . . be insisted upon is the ubiquity and
centrality of antinomian tenets to Blake's thinking, to his writing and to his
painting. Throughout his work
there will be found this radical disassociation and opposition between the
Moral Law and that gospel of Christ which is known--as often in the antinomian
tradition--as "the Everlasting Gospel." . . . The signatures of this antinomian
sensibility will be found, not at two or three points only in Blake's work, but
along the whole length of his work, at least from 1790 until his death. (18-9)
Thompson shows in detail how Blake adopted language and images from the
antinomian tradition, while not however strictly following any sect's
teachings. Rather the poet
reinterpreted fellow radicals' ideas to his own brilliant ends, putting a
Blakean twist on their theology and ending with a body of work and doctrine
that arguably made him "the greatest of the antinomians." Thompson writes:
[I do not] suppose
that very much has been settled if we hang up his work on a hook marked
"antinomian" and think that then we have put it in place. Antinomianism, indeed, is not a place
at all, but a way of breaking out from received wisdom and moralism, and
entering upon new possibilities.
The particular attack of Blake's through and feeling is unique . . .
. Even so, I am not saying nothing
[by placing Blake in the antinomian tradition]. I am arguing that these ideas are intrinsic and central to
the structure of Blake's thought, and that they remain so. . . And I am arguing also that even those
critics who have noted the antinomian influence have rarely noted its
structural centrality; and that, in general, extensive critical attention has
been paid to quite secondary, or even trivial, influences upon Blake, while
this major and continuing influence has remained little examined. (19-20)
Of the different sects Thompson considers likely to have influenced
Blake, he settles on the Muggletonians as the most important. The sect got its start from chapter 11
of Revelations, where an angel tells St. John:
I will give power
unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and
threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.
These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before
the God of the earth.
In 1652 a London tailor named John Reeve experienced visions and
received "a commission from God" to be "His appointed
Prophet." The sect takes its
name from Reeve's cousin, Ludowick Muggleton, who had similar visions. Members believed Reeve and Muggleton
were the "two witnesses" mentioned in Revelations.
Unlike the Quakers and other contemporary sects, Muggletonians did not
evangelize, so the number of believers always remained small. Their typical religious service took
the form of a meeting in a pub, where beer would be shared and the sect's songs
would be sung. Much stress was put
on the composing, recording and singing of songs, and over the decades members
would be called upon to subscribe to the printing of new editions of the song
book.
Muggletonian doctrine is fascinating and, to a great degree, internally
coherent. In some respects their
teachings remind one of the Gnostics; in others they couldn't be further from
Gnostic thought.
According to the Muggletonian doctrine of the Two Seeds, the mixture of
good and evil in humanity is to be ascribed to humanity's twin paternity. Abel and Seth were true children of
Adam and Eve; Cain, however, was sired on Eve by the Serpent. Thompson quotes a Muggletonian text and
explains:
The Tree
of which Eve eat, called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, was her being overcome by the glorious Appearance of
the Devil made in the form of an Angel of Light.
This Devil (or Angel
of Light) appeared in the form of a glorious Serpent, who copulated with
Eve. Entering within Eve's womb
the Serpent transmuted himself "into Flesh, Blood and Bone" and the
offspring of the intercourse was Cain, whereas Abel and his young brother Seth
(in whose generation the Devil had no part) were the offspring of the divine
principle in which God had created Adam.
But from the moment of the Fall, Satan disappears from the rest of the
cosmos, having dissolved himself in Eve's womb and perpetuated himself in Cain
and Cain's seed and only there.
(73)
As was also taught by certain of the Gnostic sects, the Muggletonians
insisted there were two seeds in humanity: a good and an evil. Also like the Gnostics, the evil in
humanity was not the result simply of man's temptation and disobedience, but of
the evil principle actually tampering with (in this case impregnating) the
first human generation.
The sect's doctrine of Christ is of the greatest interest and is
parallel to their doctrine of the Fall.
The Muggletonians rejected the Trinity, insisting instead, in a quite
striking departure, that when God was incarnated as Jesus Christ he was no
longer present in Heaven but only in Jesus. Entering Mary's womb,
God dissolved there so as to be born in the human form of Jesus. Thus not only was Jesus wholly God, as other Christians insisted, but when he walked the
earth God was present nowhere else in the universe. This teaching implied a further striking idea: that God died
entirely on the cross, that God himself was dead for a time, coming back to
life on the third day. As a
Muggletonian text put it:
When Christ died the
whole Godhead was absolutely Void of all Life heat or Motion. Father son & Holy Ghost became
Extinct in Death. The whole Life
of the Infinet power was Dead.
Thompson comments:
This accentuated the dramatic sacrificial symbolism of
the Cross: God literally took on mortality and paid its penalty in order to
redeem the faithful. How he got out of this situation at the Resurrection was a fruitful
source of dispute and dissention among subsequent believers. (78)
From a Jewish or Muslim perspective, the Christian doctrine that Jesus
was both God and man is already quite radical. The One God, it is asserted, would not lower Himself to become
human. But the Muggletonians,
rejecting the Trinity as these other Western monotheists do, push the humanism
in Christianity even further: not only was Christ God incarnate, he was all
of God.
One quickly notices an interesting parallel structure in Muggletonian
thought. Just as the Fall was
effected when the Serpent entered Eve's womb and transmuted himself into Cain,
so redemption is effected when God enters Mary's womb and transmutes himself
into Jesus. And just as it is
asserted that God was entirely present in Jesus and present nowhere else in the
universe while Jesus walked the earth, so it is said that Satan disappeared
from the rest of the cosmos after dissolving himself in Eve's womb: Satan,
thenceforth, was present only in fallen man. The extremism of such views, taken literally, is hard to
credit; yet there is a remarkable humanism of a kind, as well as a strong
narrative logic. Thompson's own assessment
of the Muggletonian faith is sympathetic:
From a certain
rational standpoint--the single vision of literalism--all religious symbolism
may appear as absurd. The rational
mind can do little more than stand outside it and comment on its consistency or
inconsistency. From this
standpoint I can see nothing more absurd in Muggletonian doctrine than in great
and supposedly intellectually reputable faiths. . . . The Muggletonian doctrines of the Fall, the Two Seeds and
the conception of Christ, combine literalism with a robust symbolic power. The dual impregnations of Eve and Mary
give to the doctrine a certain symmetry, like a figure-of-eight, as well as
intellectual consistency. . . . I will suggest that--a few peripheral doctrines
apart--Muggletonian beliefs were logical, powerful in their symbolic operation
and have only been held to be "ridiculous" because the Muggletonians
were losers and because their faith was professed by "poor
enthusiasts" and not by scholars, bishops or successful evangelists. (78-9)
This is well put and in
large measure correct. Yet one
would be curious to see how the sectarians defended some of their
doctrines--for example their notion of Jesus being an incarnation of all of the
Godhead--in relation to the text of the Gospels. The Gospels frequently quote Jesus referring to his
"Father in Heaven" or to "our Father," and there is no
implication in the texts that this father is somehow temporarily not there.
Although Blake was not a member of the sect--the poet, as Thompson
says, "does not follow
doctrine but turns it to his own account"--parallels between Muggletonian
teachings and Blake's thought are clear.
Across his long poetic and polemic career, Blake stressed many of the
same themes the sectarians did.
There is enough overlap in these themes to make Thompson's argument
compelling.
The historian identifies four major thematic parallels between Blake
and the sect, as follows: the repudiation of the Moral Law; the theme of
Reason; the symbolism of the Fall; the prominent role given the Serpent. According to Thompson, it is the
cumulative weight of the four that suggests not just a general Dissenting
influence, but a specifically Muggletonian one.
Discussing the Moral Law and Reason, Thompson quotes the sectarian
leaders at length, then shows passages where Blake is working with the same
terms in much the same register.
Thus Muggleton:
The law is not
written in the seed of faith's nature at all, but in the seed of reason's
nature only. Therefore the seed of
faith is not under the law, but is above the law.
The law is imagined as a
"flaming sword," and Muggleton writes in reference to the Fall:
"Those cherubims which had the flaming sword which turned every way, to
keep the way of the Tree of Life . . . had the same law of reason written in
their seed." And:
"[This] flaming sword . . . was that very law of reason which . . . is
called the moral law, or the law of Moses."
There are passages in Blake that seem rooted in the same theology:
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. (93)
The Muggletonian condemnation of reason is very similar to that found
in Blake. The rejection of
temporal human reason as being "unclean" and "corrupted"
goes all the way back to the founders of the sect, but, according to Thompson,
becomes even stronger in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the sect felt its
doctrines more threatened by Enlightenment thought. Thompson quotes a passage from Muggleton in which the founder
identifies the corrupted force of human reason with Pilate: "his reason .
. . delivered up the Just One to be crucified by reasonable Men." Thompson points to various parallel
passages in Blake: "Christ
& his Apostles were Illiterate Men.
Caiaphas Pilate & Herod were Learned." "Rational Truth is not the Truth
of Christ, but of Pilate. It is
the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil."
According to Thompson, Muggletonian discourse repeatedly returns to the
theme of reason as Satanic principle, as a product of the Fall. And likewise:
Few themes recur
with more consistency in the whole trajectory of Blake's work than Reason
(often in association with the moral law) binding, constraining or corrupting
life. (95)
The historian similarly treats the serpent symbolism in the
Muggletonians and Blake, noting a striking echo in Blake's Book of Urizen. The
sectarians had insisted on Eve literally being impregnated by Satan, the
Serpent, who entered her womb and dissolved there, engendering Cain. In the Book of Urizen Blake writes of Enitharmon conceiving Orc:
When Enitharmon, sick, Felt a Worm within her womb
All day the worm lay on her bosom
All night within her womb
The worm lay till it grew to a serpent
With dolorous hissings & poisons
Round Enitharmon's loins folding. . .
Thompson writes:
[The serpent
symbolism] continues in the convoluted couplings of serpents and females in the
prophetic books; and it takes a new and powerful form (both visually and in
verse) in the image of the 'mortal coil'--a literal serpent coil--which Christ
sheds on the cross, shedding thus one of his two natures. (97)
Once again, with the
serpent symbolism in the Muggletonians and Blake, one may be reminded of the
ancient Gnostics. Here, however,
the image of Christ shedding or defeating a serpent coil on the cross suggests
a meaning directly contrary to that given the serpent in Gnostic thought. For the ancient Gnostics, the serpent
in the Garden came to liberate man from an evil Demiurge. The knowledge given man by the Gnostic
serpent is liberating; therefore thus knowledge may be associated with
Jesus. It is quite the opposite
for Blake and the Muggletonians.
Michael Foretells the Crucifixion, from Nine Illustrations to Paradise Lost.
Pen and watercolor on paper, 1808.
Thompson's book ends with perceptive readings of three major poems:
"The Divine Image," "London," and "The Human
Abstract." Particularly in
the case of "London," Thompson demonstrates the importance of
historical understanding to the appreciation of Blake's poetry. His careful attention to the poem's
movement and to the particular charge of Blake's choice of terms brings new
clarity to the poem.
By a noteworthy historical coincidence, Thompson was working on his
thesis of a Muggletonian influence on Blake during the same decades that saw
the sect's last surviving member pass away. Thompson was trying to track down the Muggletonian archive,
which he knew had been held in the church's reading room as recently as the
early part of the century. As of
1939, however, there was no longer a church reading room and no way of knowing
what had happened to the church itself or the archive. Making inquiries through the Times
Literary Supplement, Thompson was
eventually led to a Mr. Philip Noakes, who, it turned out, was most likely the
church's last living member. In
his home Noakes held an important part of the archive, including papers and
correspondence going back to the 17th century.
It was a strange
situation. Mr Noakes himself was
the last repository of a 300-year-old tradition. He conversed with me freely about Muggletonian practices and
doctrine, which had been carried down to him with a clarity (and, indeed,
coherence) which reproduced their seventeenth-century origin. Mr Noakes frequently said: "We
believe"--and yet one could not point to another believer. There was absolutely nothing of the
fanatic or crank in his manner. He
was always quiet and concise in his explanations, and I quickly formed a
respect for him. (116)
It was through Mr. Noakes that the main body of the archive had been
saved after the London building in which it was kept was firebombed during the
war. A fruit farmer, Noakes packed
the archive into eighty-some apple crates and stored it in a furniture
depository, where Thompson and Noakes went together to collect it. The archive is now in the British
Library, thanks to Thompson's scholarly persistence and Philip Noakes'
faith. The last Muggletonian
passed away in 1979.
One wonders, reading this
brilliant and wide-ranging study, what the Muggletonian faithful would have
made of Blake. Doubtless they'd
have appreciated many of his poems, as they'd have found others opaque or
aberrant. In any case, there seems
to be no evidence of a Muggletonian response to Blake, even if, as Thompson
would have it, Blake is in some measure a brilliant and eccentric response to
them. To what degree Thompson's
thesis is correct is hard to say; that it hits the mark in some fundamental
way, however, seems obvious. Blake
and the sectarians thought in much the same theological idiom.
December 12, 2006
Check Thompson's *Witness Against the Beast* at Amazon.com
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