By confusing the roles of Christ and Satan, Blake confuses anyone who wishes to think in clear terms of good and evil. Having obscured the notion of moral absolutes, Blake makes the orthodox reader more receptive to his Proverbs of Hell. What before might have seemed over-indulgent now seems reasonable, because Blake has exploded the idea that the indulgence of desire is evil. Restraining desires creates a cistern within, whereas satisfied desires are like a beautiful, overflowing fountain. Orthodox religion not only fails to recognize the virtues of energy and desire, it actively seeks to repress them with reason and restraint.
Religion is an endeavor to reconcile the two.
Blake desires a marriage of heaven and hell, but his concept of a marriage differs from that endorsed in orthodox religion. In an orthodox marriage, the woman would submit to her husband. Blake, however, envisions a marriage in which two contraries remain in opposition, neither submitting to the other, and the life of the marriage arises from the very energy that exists between them. Orthodox religion maintains that the ultimate progress is a reconciliation of contraries that culminates in the destruction of evil by good. Blake supposes the parable in which Christ separates the sheep from the goats is analogous to separating the contraries, and that Christ's claim to bring a sword represents his wish to maintain tension between the contraries rather than provide a peace that would require the submission of energy to restraint.