There are three comments in which Blake introduces an element lacking in the voluminous writings of Swedenborg. On Swedenborg's statement: "A spiritual idea does not derive anything from space, but it derives its all from state," he remarks: "_Poetic_ idea"; on paragraph 10, Blake comments: "He who loves feels love descend into him, and if he is wise, may perceive it from the _Poetic Genius_, which is the Lord"; on Swedenborg's phrase: "The negation of God constitutes hell," he remarks: "The negation of the _Poetic Genius_."
Here we get a hint of a small seed of difference which when fully grown was to sever Blake from Swedenborg for ever.
I must give one more, very pregnant, passage from _The Angelic Wisdom_.
68. _Man out of his hereditary evil reacts against God. But if he believes that all his life is from God, and all good of life from the action of God, and all evil of life from the reaction of man, then reaction becomes the offspring of action, and man acts with God as from himself. The equilibrium of all things is from action and joint reaction, and everything must be in equilibrium._
The last sentence makes hell an eternal necessity to preserve the equilibrium of heaven. Strictly it makes also the devil an eternal counterweight to God, and what else follows we may learn by studying Zoroastrian dualism. Blake's comment was:
"God and evil are here both good, and the two contraries married."
Blake was early occupied with the marriage of contraries. Swedenborg's word was a sanguine seed in prepared soil, and when it brought forth fruit a hundredfold, the rich return was not the logical outcome of Swedenborg's dualism, but a marriage of heaven and hell, of religion and art, which is showing a fertile capacity for endless reproduction.
So far, then, Swedenborg's attraction for Blake far exceeded his repulsion, and he embraced him with impetuous affection. Here was a teacher who could understand by experience both the new birth and vision. By his help he disentangled himself from the particular explanation and theory of the atonement as given by Whitefield and Wesley. Here was a visionary who could not only understand his own visions, but who could give a reasonable explanation of the working of the visionary faculty. Swedenborg brought order, reason, and system into Blake's chaotic mind. Isolated from the churches, yet ardently desiring fellowship as the substance of his faith and wisdom, it appeared to him that there was nothing else to do but join the New Church of Swedenborg, and accordingly, in 1788, he and Catherine signed their names in token of membership and assent to the distinctive doctrines of the New Church. The curious may find this reported in the Minutes of the first Seven Sessions of the General Conference of the New Church, published by James Speirs, 36 Bloomsbury Street, 1885.