Swedenborg never gave any serious consideration to the catholic theory, but supplied its place out of the store of his supersensual revelations. Loaded with these, and with a vague memory of the gnostic teaching of the threefold meaning of the Scriptures, he was able to evade every literal difficulty by turning to the spiritual meaning, and if need be to the celestial, which could be reached only through his own specific revelation. It is true that he tried to bring a steadying factor into his subjective interpretation by introducing his doctrine of correspondences; but as he has never been able to convince any but his elect followers that his correspondences, beyond some obvious ones, are other than arbitrary, he has succeeded only in making his commentaries on Genesis, Exodus, and the Apocalypse unreadable to the vast majority of Christians.
I have said enough about Swedenborg to make it clear that there was some affinity between him and Blake.
Blake's imperfect knowledge of him was much deepened in 1788, when he read his _Angelic Wisdom concerning the Divine Love and concerning the Divine Wisdom_. This he marked and annotated, and so we are able to trace the affinity in considerable detail.
On the whole Blake gives almost passionate approval to _The Angelic Wisdom_. Only in rare instances does he differ. Swedenborg's doctrine of state made explicit what Blake had vaguely perceived all his life. It also helped him to formulate a theoretic explanation of his own supersensual vision. This is so important that I must quote an entire paragraph from _The Angelic Wisdom_, for the sake of Blake's comment and the reader's understanding.
69. THE DIVINE FILLS ALL THE SPACES OF THE UNIVERSE APART FROM SPACE. _There are two things proper to nature,_ SPACE _and_ TIME. _Out of these man in the natural world forms the ideas of his thought and therefore his understanding. If he remains in these ideas and does not raise his mind above them he is nowise able to perceive anything spiritual and Divine, for he involves them in ideas which derive from space and time; and in proportion as he does this, the light--the lumen--of his understanding becomes merely natural. To think from the lumen in reasoning about spiritual and Divine things, is like thinking from the thick darkness of night concerning the things which appear only in the light of day. This is the origin of naturalism. But he who knows how to raise his mind above the ideas of thought which derive from space and time, passes from thick darkness into light, and apprehends spiritual and Divine things, and, at last, sees those things which are in them and from them, and then by virtue of that light he disperses the thick darkness of the natural lumen, and relegates its fallacies from the middle to the sides. Every man with an understanding is able to think, and actually does think, above those properties of nature; and then he affirms and sees that the Divine, being omnipresent, is not in space. He is also able to affirm and to see those things which have been adduced above. But if he denies the Divine Omnipresence and ascribes all things to nature, then he is not willing to be elevated, although he is able._