The devil pointed out how Jesus Christ was obedient to impulse, and how His obedience to His passionate energies--to the Voice of God within Him--made Him the Great Rebel and Law Breaker, mocking the sabbath and the sabbath's God, guilty of the blood of His martyrs, exonerating the woman taken in adultery, living on the labour and sweat of wage-slaves, acquiescing in a false witness by His silence, coveting the best gifts for His disciples. It was a Pharisee who said, "All these laws have I kept from my youth," and he became a dead soul. Jesus on the cross looked back on a pathway strewn with the corpses of the religious people He had killed in His fiery impetuous course, and instead of a death-repentance, He uttered the audacious word, "Father, into Thy Hands I commend My Spirit." The angel was converted. Embracing the flame of fire he was consumed, and rose again as Elijah--the prophet of spirit and fire. And thus Blake took his leave of Swedenborg. He had expected too much of him and was disappointed. It was more than enough to hear his name on the lips of his pious, commonplace brother. He was indignant that he had not fulfilled his high-sounding pretensions, and "the voice of honest indignation," he wrote, "is the voice of God." But we who calmly look on can detect the voice of resentment too, which robs his departure of grace. But for Swedenborg _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_ had never been written. Swedenborg was the Goliath, strong in reason, logic, system, science, intellect, slain by the stone from David's sling. Blake and not Swedenborg was "the true Samson shorn by the Churches." CHAPTER VI THE REBELS Blake was thirty-three when in 1790 he wrote _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_. It marked a crisis in his life. Hitherto, with all the generous exuberance of youth, he was striving to leave the past behind, and reach forth to something new that by sheer glory and beauty should sweep up in its course the youth of the ages to come. For a time he believed that Swedenborg could supply him with the fire to fashion and direct his own genius; but after poring long over his pages, he began reluctantly to discover that the fire of his imagination had either never been kindled or it was long since extinct. Whatever else remained in Swedenborg--and there were undeniably many good things--was impotent for the supreme task of supplying the creative spark. Blake was disappointed and disillusioned. Never again did he make an impetuous rush to embrace any man, however dazzling his gifts. But not yet had he learnt the vital value of the past. If no new prophet arrived, there was still himself, and if he trusted himself with passionate faith, he might yet accomplish the desired thing. In 1791 the outer events of his life ran a new course. Some time previously, Fuseli had introduced him to a bookseller and publisher named Johnson, living at 72 St Paul's Churchyard.