In Blake's "Laocoön": The Eternal Body of Man is the Imagination, that is,/ God himself/ The Divine Body/ } Jesus: we are his Members./ It manifests itself in

In Blake's "Laocoön": The Eternal Body of Man is the Imagination, that is,/ God himself/ The Divine Body/ } Jesus: we are his Members./ It manifests itself in his Works of Art (In Eternity All is Vision). Blake took the idea of man made in God's image a lot more seriously--literally--than those of his time, which influenced a lot of his ideas about church politics and sexuality. For example, by questioning why church could not be held inside an alehouse, where people were warm and in comfort, and by questioning why the church cast sexuality primarily as a sin. Blake repeats in his poetry that Jesus was the person sent to forgive sin, which would allow humans to once again see the vision of an integrated human made in God's image, which was lost in the Fall. Blake says Jesus wasn't sent to enforce a moral law that the church promulgated at the time, which only served to keep the human psyche in the divided, fallen, state. This is an idea that is explored again in Philip Pullman's Dark Materials books, where sexuality and maturity is "Dust", which the church in the book sees as the original sin. Other figures, such as the Spectres, which I read as Blake's experience of depression, which he often lapsed into, especially in his one and only stint outside London, to Felpham, are also transplanted into Pullman's work. Pullman's work is a really rich development of Blake's ideas, and I think Blake would have been proud.