The Last
Antinomian and the First Prophet of the Modern World
The Last
Antinomian and the First Prophet of the Modern World
The word '
antinomian' was formerly more in usage than at present, when 'anarchist' has probably taken its place (though they are not exactly the same). According to my dictionary, an
antinomian is 'one who holds that under the gospel dispensation of grace the moral law is of no use or obligation because faith alone is necessary to salvation'; also: 'one who rejects a socially established morality.' More practically,
from a concrete historical perspective, the Civil War and Interregnum in England, 1640-1660, is the 'classic period of the rise of the
antinomians, generally of the poorer
classes, who rejoiced in the overthrow of the monarchy, the execution of the King, and the
suspension of royal law. Hence, their version of Christianity emphasized the indwelling of faith, in sharp contrast to the 'outward show' of pomp and circumstance associated with the aristocracy.
During that era, a Londoner named
Thomason made the rounds of the booksellers, purchasing a copy of every new publication, including the wildest tracts, prophecies of the end of the world, etc. I have had the pleasure of using this remarkable collection, which is one of the treasures of the British Museum. Indeed,
manby of these tracts survive in single copies, preserved by
Thomason, three and a half centuries ago. Some of these have recently been reprinted, and will be reviewed in future issues.
Amon the many diverse radical groups of the period were the Levellers, Diggers, Quakers, Ranters, and the
Muggletonians. It is this last group and its
connectinos to the poet
Wiliam Blake, which is the subject of a new book by the late British historian, E.P. Thompson, Witness: William Blake and the Moral Law(New York: The New Press, 1993). Other scholars have previously noted the connection between various themes and images in Blake's work, and the
Muggletonians, but Thompson has drawn together the
curcial documentation and argument for how the connection worked. This has not always
beena problem, since the
Muggletonians flourished in the mid to late 17
th century, and were vaguely known to have survived as an obscure religious sect until Blake's own times a century later.
William Blake was born in London in 1757, the son of a hosier. Early in life, he displayed artistic ability, and was apprenticed to an engraver, becoming a journeyman in that trade. As a young man, Blake befriended Thomas Paine and the other radicals, and expressed his rebellious tendencies in books which he published himself, combining original graphics with poetry and prose of his own composition. These were similar in some ways to the illuminated manuscripts of the middle ages, but were actually printed, and then hand-colored. In addition, the content of these books ranged from the seemingly simple lyrics, as in
teh Songs of Innocence and of Experience to the openly revolutionary, as in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Blake produced enigmatic but somehow archetypal poetic narratives of the American Revolution (in America), and the French Revolution (in The French Revolution, which survives only in a single set of page proofs, and apparently was never published). Others of these 'prophetic books' area radical reinterpretation or revision of the Bible itself: The Book of
Urizen, The Book of Los, and so on. Though Blake was clearly proud of his work, he soon was the victim of the generally reactionary response to the French Revolution, and 'public opinion' such as it was, considered him to be eccentric, if not actually insane. For the rest of his life, he continued to survive as an engraver, and through commissions of a very few friends and patrons who recognized his genius. His 'illuminated books' were printed from his own plates, to order, and were often gorgeously colored. His great masterpiece, the epic Jerusalem, survives in one colored copy, and few printed in black. A biography by Alexander Gilchrist, published in 1863 began the process of rescuing
Blak from the charge of madness. The studies of S. Foster Damon in the 1920s
demonstrrated the logic and significance of Blake's unique personal mythology. David
Erdman showed how the poetry reflected the political events of his times, in Blake: Prophet Against Empire. The 1960s produced what amount4ed to a Blake
rennaissance, in which he was viewed by young radicals as a forerunner of their own rebellion against the established order. Indeed, at that time, Blake's reputations became international, from France and England, to china and America. From the obscurity of his own times, Blake finally came to be recognized by many as the equal of Chaucer, Milton and Shakespeare--and the only 'major' British poet who was clearly of working class origins. This is surely one of the most remarkable transformations in the history of literature.
There is not space here to explore his
oetry in greater depth. A few libraries around the country may have a long out of print volume, edited by Norman
Rudich, and entitled Weapons of Criticism (
Palo Alto:
Reamparts, 1976), which includes my illustrated essay, 'William Blake and Radical Tradition.'
Edward Thompson's monumental book The Making of the English Working Class, which was published here in 1964, evoked the world of plebeian radicalism of the early 19
th century, a turbulent scene in which the new factories of the Industrial Revolution supplanted the
samll-scale cottage industries of the countryside. Based on original sources, Thompson's study rescued from oblivion, the many courageous attempts of the people to confront the injustices of the time, in riots, massacres, in their own newspapers, and so on. This was clearly Blake's own culture, as distinct from the 'regency' culture of the upper classes.
At the end of the introduction to present book (his last), Thompson recalls, '...in 1968 I gave an early lecture on Blake at Columbia University (in New York City), at the time of excitement when some sort of campus revolution against the Moral Law was going on, and I startled the audience by acclaiming Blake as 'the founder of the obscure sect to which I myself belong, the
Muggletonian Marxists.' Instantly I found that many fellow-sectaries were in the room. As the years have gone by I have become less certain of both parts of the combinations. But that is still the general area in which this book falls.'
For the record, I'd like to say that not only was I present on that occasion at Columbia University; Mike Friedman and I were the sponsors of the event, under the auspices of the Students for a Democratic Society Radical Literary Project (members=two!). We had sponsored a few events, sparely attended, so we were both astonished when the whole place was packed for Thompson's lecture, around 200 or so, standing room only. A few were aware of A.L. Morton's 1958 study of Blake, which linked him with the 17
th century traditions of radicalism, and called him 'The Last
Antinomian.' Now Thompson made the link specific, in the form of a connection with the followers of
Lodowich Muggleton. These
constituted a tiny remnant by Blake's time, but some of the
imagistic similarities (of which, more in a moment), were too unusual and too close to be accidental. Those of us there on that occasion had the pleasure of 'being in' on the announcement of the solution to an intellectual puzzle of some significance.
Word of Thompson's findings soon got around to Blake scholars, and to those interested in the intellectual history of proletarian movements. After 1968, when people met Thompson, they would often ask him when his long=awaited book on Blake was going to be published, somewhat to his vexation, I believe. When the book appeared at last, 25 years after that original lecture at Columbia, the reasons for Thompson's delay were revealed. It turns out that while various of the
Muggletonian publications (and some scholarship about them) were available previously, there remained various unanswered questions. Thompson recalls how a correspondence about the
Muggletonians developed in the Times Literary Supplement in 1975. In
TLS, Thompson mentioned that he was searching for the archive of the
Muggletonians, which had survived at least until 1869, when the Reverend Alexander Gordon visited their reading room in London. Through a message from a friend, Thompson learned that
aMr. Philip
Noakes, of the town of
Matfield near
Tunbridge Wells
in Kent, was 'the last
Muggletonian,' having transferred the archive to his safe-keeping during World War II. Searching through some 82 boxes, Thompson found 18
th century manuscript songbooks of the
Muggletonians, and other contemporary books. Thus, through luck and decades-long persistence, Thompson was at last in possession of 'inside' documents which dated to
Bolake's own day.
So, exactly what is Thompson's argument? 'The
Muggletonian Church,' he says, 'preserved a vocabulary of symbolism, a whole cluster of signs and images, which recur--but in a new form and organisation, and in association with others--in Blake's poetry and painting. I will go further: of all the traditions touched upon, I know of none which consistently transmits so large a cluster of
Blakean symbols.' That is to say, whereas it has long been thought that Blake invented his own mythology (a claim he in fact made), he had a real and explicit cultural context for it. Not only did the
Muggletonians participate in the 'anti=Moral Law' currents of the
antinomians generally, they specifically developed a curious doctrine unique to them, 'the explicit and repetitive
identification of 'Reason' as the Satanic principle, the fruit of the
Trea of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.' 'No theme,' says Thompson, 'recurs more in
Muggletonian discourse.' Thompson readily demonstrates the persistence of this theme in Blake's work.
In addition, he emphasized two more elements of doctrine: 'the
unusual symbolism of the Fall, and the Serpent-Angel's actual copulation with Eve and transmutation into flesh and blood in her womb.' With striking acuity, Thompson discusses the numerous disturbing examples of serpent imagery in Blake's poetry and his graphic art. The strange emphasis ion sexuality and
religious corruption, in the form of a Rational Serpent is noted throughout Blake's work, for instance in the 'I saw a Chapel All of Gold.' This poem is surely one of the most 'blasphemous' ever written, but if we study the
Muggletonian literature, its context becomes at once apparent. Biblical artists often depicted Satanic serpents, of course, but the connection of Satan and
Reason is unique to the
Muggletonians, according to Thompson.
Thompson does not find Blake or any of his known friends
among the records of the
Muggletonians. He speculates that
Blake's mother might have been the connection, but that nothing definite can presently be established on that score.
Witness Against the Beast, then, is partly an account of the survival of the
Muggletonians, a study of their connection with the imagery and ideas of William Blake, and an explication of some of the shorter lyrics in terms of that
imagistic inheritance. The culture of various other sects, such as the
Swedenborgians, is also explored. This is carefully wrought special study of how some core puzzles about one of the most important English poets might be addressed, if not entirely solved. Given the fragmentary nature of the documentation, we might never know for certain what Blake's actual connection to the
Muggletonians was. For one thing, Frederick
Tatham, on of Blake's friends, is alleged to have destroyed some of his most 'heretical' writings or books; that might have been the evidence we need.
What is Blake's connection with the history of
Freethought? We have noted his ties to working-class radicalism, and his friendship with Paine, but it is his critique of the 'Enlightenment' that is, perhaps, most interesting. Blake believed that skepticism, Deism in his day, would have a reductive effect on mankind. Locke's denial of faith and his emphasis on experience meant that we would be at the mercy of events themselves. The skepticism of Hume and Gibbon would
arrive at a dead end. Newton's mechanistic concept of the universe was, in Blake's memorable phrase, 'single vision.' Thompson demonstrates that the
Muggletonians seem to have had an intellectual anti-Rationalist philosophy, which Blake shared, and elaborated into enduring poetry. This is why Blake's view of the world doesn't seem to comfortably fit into any easy pattern. He was a heretic of a particular kind, a radical Christian with no use for the great and powerful of the world.
'Blake did not achieve any full synthesis of the
antinomian and the rationalist,' concludes Thompson. 'How
could he, since the
antinominan premised a non-rational affirmative? There was, rather, an
incandescence in his art in which the incompatible traditions met--tried to marry--argued as contraries--were held in polarised tension.' Then, Thompson trenchantly observes: 'The busy perfectionists and benevolent rationalists of 1791-6 nearly all ended up, by the later 1800s, as disenchanted men. Human nature, they decided, had let them down and proved stubborn in resistance to enlightenment. But William Blake, by denying even in the Songs of Experience a supreme societal value to rationality, did no suffer from the same kind of disenchantment.' One ponders on the trajectories of various kinds of reformers in our own day, and why they lacked staying power on the road to a better human future.
My only criticism of Thompson's book is that he somehow failed to grasp the meaning of Blake's longer, more difficult 'prophetic books,' including three epic poems. Admittedly, these are dense in texture and obscure in their action, but I think that in creating his own mythological characters and plots, Blake achieved a breakthrough that not only summarized the received tradition of the
antinomians, but illuminated the structure of class conflict in the modern world. In the terrible burning landscapes of the epics, we can glimpse the
devastation's of our own times, to which Edward Thompson bore an eloquent witness in his more contemporary books. In his last work, Thompson the master historian remained true to Blake, and to the spirit of English radicalism.
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