The Devil answer'd: bray a fool in a morter with wheat, yet shall not his folly be beaten out of him; if Jesus Christ is the greatest man, you ought to love him in the greatest degree; now hear how he has given his sanction to the law of ten commandments: did he not mock at the sabbath, and so mock the sabbaths God? murder those who were murder'd because of him? turn away the law from the woman taken in adultery? steal the labor of others to support him? bear false witness when he omitted making a defense before Pilate? covet when he pray'd for his disciples, and when he bid them shake off the dust of their feet against such as refused to lodge them? I tell you, no virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments; Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules.

Largely unrecognised during his lifetime Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. A more recent (and very short) study William Blake: Visionary Anarchist by Peter Marshall (1988) classified Blake and his contemporary William Godwin as forerunners of modern anarchism. In Visions Blake writes:

In the 19th century poet and free love advocate Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote a book on Blake drawing attention to the above motifs in which Blake praises "sacred natural love" that is not bound by another's possessive jealousy the latter characterised by Blake as a "creeping skeleton".

His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of the Romantic movement and "Pre-Romantic" for its large appearance in the 18th century. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England – indeed to all forms of organised religion – Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American revolutions as well as by such thinkers as Jakob Böhme and Emanuel Swedenborg. Despite these known influences the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify.