His deism was a symptom of the times. Dr Priestley, who also attended Johnson's dinners, was a polished ornament of the sect. They persuaded themselves that God, having set the universe agog, remained Himself wholly outside of it. It was well that Blake should come into personal touch with these rebel deists. They could never appeal to him even for a moment, for he was penetrated all his life with the belief that God dwelt inside of His creation; and since all theological rebellion tended more and more in the direction of a mechanical deism, he began to suspect that he must look elsewhere to discover the wisdom that should crown his years. Yet there was something in Paine that appealed to Blake. They were both worshippers of liberty, and while they could not meet on theological ground, they were stirred alike by the portentous and successive crises on the other side of the Channel. Paine felt that he still had work to do. He had served his apprenticeship in America, he would now put forth his whole strength in his _Rights of Man_, and help forward the sacred cause of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. There were other rebels--Holcroft, playwright and translator, friend of Godwin, afterwards to be sent to Newgate; Hardy and Thelwall; Horne Tooke, who raised subscriptions for the relief of Americans and spoke of the transactions at Lexington and Concord as "inhuman murders." He was to be tried along with Holcroft and sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment. Now Blake sympathized with all these rebels in their political aspirations; but whereas their watchword was reason, and their revolt was in the name of reason, he believed that reason carried one very little way, and that the elemental deeps of life and passion that lie far under reason must be stirred and aroused if the work of rebellion was to bring forth lasting fruit. In any case, the reason-bound men had little to teach him. He had looked to Swedenborg, he had taken knowledge of his advanced contemporaries. Godwin rebelled for political liberty, Mary Wollstonecraft for liberty of women and children, Tom Paine for liberty of man. What was left for Blake? The sex question had never been dragged out into the light. The subject was unclean. Sexual morality consisted in repression. Nowhere as here does repression breed such poisonous fruits. Was not sex a part of that vital fire and passion in which Blake believed with his whole heart? Was it not true that whatsoever lives is holy? Must not there be liberty for the sexual instinct if it was to be kept clean? For the next ten years Blake became the advocate of bodily liberty, indistinguishable from free-love. This was to be the recurring theme again and again in his prophetic books. This was to be his contribution towards the new kind of man or superman for whom he was groping. Afterwards, when he had given substance and form in his prophecies to the vague and indefinite thoughts that lay in him, he was to learn how to estimate and place them.