Blake found that he could keep company with Wesley for a longer time. Wesley had no rigid Calvinism, and he was not content unless imputed righteousness should pass by a second blessing into imparted holiness. Here also Blake's language was wholly different from Wesley's, but the thing he arrived at--the unification of all his powers under the inspiration and creative force of his imagination--led him along a path very like that trodden by Wesley and his methodists as they pressed towards the goal of entire sanctification. It is important to go behind words to things, but it is equally important to come back to a form of sound words. The methodists have been imprisoned by their wordy formulæ, while Blake by his vision of the things behind words not only preserved his freedom, but also, by freeing his imagination, was enabled to create beautiful rhythmic words which invoke instead of imprison. [Illustration: JOHN GASPAR LAVATER. _Engraved by Blake._] Among his contemporaries Blake discovered a deeper kinship with Lavater than with any of these. Whitefield and Wesley had succeeded in reviving in themselves the first glow and enthusiasm of protestantism. Lavater is once removed from his zealous protestant forefathers, and the things that they had repressed were making their reappearance in him. Among these was the feeling for the beautiful, which, as he welcomed and nourished it, deepened his sympathies and enlarged his outlook. What he lost in fiery zeal he gained in geniality. He had a constant perception of the truth that outward things are an index to inner conditions and correspond with them. This prompted him to observe the faces of his fellow-creatures and to attempt a system of physiognomy. His instinctive reading of faces was often astonishingly correct; but his makeshift system has no value. More to the point are his aphorisms, which were read and annotated by Blake, and these are sufficient both to reveal Lavater and bring certain lasting convictions of Blake's into a clear light. I will take a few of the more important. _Sin and destruction of order are the same._ Blake comments: "A golden sentence." He had felt for many years that all repression was futile. What is repressed comes out again in the wrong place. The last state of the repressed man is worse than his first. Blake was not yet quite clear about what was the alternative to repression, but he was sure that sin was disorder. How he resolved the disorder we shall see later on. _As the interest of man, so his God. As his God, so he._ Blake: "All gold." He preferred the word "will" to "interest." "Will" is identical with Swedenborg's "affection" and Boehme's "desire." No one has worked out the correspondence of the "heart" with the "will" so effectually as Swedenborg. Blake knew that to discover the will was to discover the man. A man can change only as he changes the object of his will. When his will is towards God, his powers fall into order and he becomes a saint.