bible3 faith

False  Faith:The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could percieve.

And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity;
Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began Priesthood;
Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.
And at length they pronounc'd that the Gods had order'd such things.
Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.

Everything that lives is holy (end of MHH)

The most striking tenet of Blake's faith was his vision of the Eternal; it was also his 

primary gift to mankind. Blake lived in an age when the realm of spirit had virtually disappeared from the intellectual horizon. This single fact explains why he stood 

out like a sore thumb in late 18th Century England and why for most of his 

contemporaries he could never be more than an irritant, an eccentric, a madman; 

their most common term of depreciation was 'enthusiast'. His primary concern 

was a world whose existence they not only denied, but held in derision.
It was a world that most of his contemporaries had deliberately closed their minds to. 
He spent his life furiously trying to strike off their mind forged manacles.

The man of faith believes some things; other things he knows by experience. 
Blake had experienced the Eternal from earliest childhood. At times the vision clouded, 
but its reality remained the one unshakeable tenet of his faith.

Blake perceived the five senses as "the chief inlets of Soul in this age" (MHH plate 4). 
The rationalists had imposed upon their world the view that life consists exclusively 
of the five senses. Blake knew better:

"How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way, Is an immense world of delight, 
clos'd by your senses five?" (MHH plate 7)

Blake was keenly alive to another world, a world of Vision, of Imagination, of God, 
which he called the Eternal.

Every child begins in Eternity. Jesus said, "Except you become as little children...."
(From Blake Primer)