Blake's Urgency

In his later years Blake wrote and drew with a keen sense of
urgency. Undoubtedly familar with Ephesians 5:16 he may have
read John Wesley's famous sermon On Redeeming the Time.

Blake had little to say about Wesley and nothing I can find re the
Wesleyans-- for some rather obvious reasons: in those days
Wesley's Methodists were part of the Anglican Church for which
Blake had little or no use; they were not churches, but chapels!
(In UMC and other Methodists groups today many churches carry
the name of Wesley Chapel.)

How did John Wesley impact our hero? At one place he gives the credit
due, Milton Plate 22 and 23:

"But then I rais'd up Whitefield, Palamabron raisd up Westley, 
And these are the cries of the Churches before the two
  Witnesses[']                                               t
Faith in God the dear Saviour who took on the likeness of men:
Becoming obedient to death, even the death of the Cross
The Witnesses lie dead in the Street of the Great City
No Faith is in all the Earth: the Book of God is trodden under
  Foot:    
He sent his two Servants Whitefield & Westley; were they Prophets
Or were they Idiots or Madmen? shew us Miracles!"
Can you have greater Miracles than these? Men who devote
Their lifes whole comfort to intire scorn & injury & death"

In one particular the two men had much in common.
Wesley wrote a sermon on E;phesian 5, verse 16:
"Redeeming the time, because the days are evil."

Blake described this same sense of urgency in the beginning of
Chapter Four of Jerusalem (Plate 77), which includes:
"We are told to abstain from fleshly desires that we may lose no time from the Work of the Lord. Every moment lost, is a moment that cannot be redeemed every pleasure that intermingles with the duty of our station is a folly unredeemable & is planted like the seed of a wild flower among our wheat."

And even more pointed are two lines near the end of Gates of Paradise (For the Sexes):
"But when once I did descry The Immortal Man that cannot Die
Thro evening shades I haste away To close the Labours of my Day" (Erdman 269)