Lambeth Prophecies II: History of the Universe

Abstract

Especially in the early 1790s, Blake’s writings reflect the sense of urgency that typifies the prophetic books of the Bible and that finds its parallel in English society generally in the cresting during these years of the tide of millenarian enthusiasm. One facet of this millenarian ferment was the conviction that the English were the Chosen People designated in Genesis, and that the French Revolution was the precipitating event that would trigger the millennium by which England would assume worldly and divine precedence. This is one reason why a self-proclaimed prophet like Blake labored to create an anglicized universal myth that would ultimately — in poems like Milton and Jerusalem — reveal that the entire Judaeo-Christian tradition pointed to an apocalyptic culmination in Great Britain: “All things Begin & End in Albions Ancient Druid Rocky Shore.” (E 171; J 27: “To the Jews”) It was “in Englands green & pleasant Land” that “in ancient time” “was Jerusalem builded”, and it was there too that it was now to be not simply built but rebuilt (E 95-96; Milton 1). This is a covenantal view of the restoration of salvation and God’s promise, but with a significant difference. Blake postulated a humanized gnostic God, epitomized in his declaration in The Marriage that “All deities reside in the human breast” (E 38; MHH 11), a claim amplified in Jerusalem by Jesus: I am in you and you are in me, mutual in love divine: I am not a God afar off, I am a brother and friend; Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me: Lo! we are One; forgiving all Evil; Not seeking recompense. (E 146; J 4:7–20)