_Sin and destruction of order are the same._
Blake comments: "A golden sentence." He had felt for many years that all repression was futile. What is repressed comes out again in the wrong place. The last state of the repressed man is worse than his first. Blake was not yet quite clear about what was the alternative to repression, but he was sure that sin was disorder. How he resolved the disorder we shall see later on.
_As the interest of man, so his God. As his God, so he._
He preferred the word "will" to "interest." "Will" is identical with Swedenborg's "affection" and Boehme's "desire." No one has worked out the correspondence of the "heart" with the "will" so effectually as Swedenborg. Blake knew that to discover the will was to discover the man. A man can change only as he changes the object of his will. When his will is towards God, his powers fall into order and he becomes a saint.
_The greatest of characters no doubt would be he who, free of all trifling accidental helps, could see objects through one grand immutable medium always at hand and proof against illusion and time, reflecting every object in its true shape and colour, through all the fluctuation of things._
He knew both as an artist and a mystic that the appearance of objects is according to the state of the beholder. This is true of the objects not only of the outer world but also of the inner, and therefore only the witness of a perfect man is trustworthy. The visions of all others must be corrected by the vision of the Christ.
_Who has witnessed one free and unrestrained act of yours has witnessed all._
Strained action was an abhorrence to Blake. Only those acts are beautiful that are impulsive, and they are they that reveal the man.
_Between the best and the worst there are, you say, innumerable degrees--and you are right. But admit that I am right too in saying that the best and the worst differ only in one thing--in the object of their love._
Blake: "Would to God that every one would consider this."
It was considered and maintained by Swedenborg, Boehme, Fénelon, and constantly by St Catherine of Siena, who to the "God is Love" of St John added "Man is love also."
_Keep him at least three paces distant who hates bread, music, and the laugh of a child._