theological tenets. Himself a heretic among the orthodox, here among the infidels he was a saint, and staunchly defended Christianity—the spirit of it—against these strangely assorted disputants.
In 1792 the artist proved, as he was wont to relate, the means of saving Paine from the vindictive clutches of exasperated 'friends of order.' Early in that year Paine had published his Second Part of The Rights of Man. A few months later, county and corporation addresses against 'seditious publications' were got up. The Government (Pitt's) answered the agreed signal by issuing a proclamation condemnatory of such publications, and commenced an action for libel against the author of The Rights of Man, which was to come off in September; all this helping the book itself into immense circulation. The 'Friends of Liberty' held their meetings too, in which strong language was used. In September, a French deputation announced to Paine that the Department of Calais had elected him member of the National Convention. Already as an acknowledged cosmopolitan and friend of man, he had been declared a citizen of France by the deceased Assembly. One day in this same month, Paine was giving at Johnson's an idea of the inflammatory eloquence he had poured fourth at a public meeting of the previous night. Blake, who was present, silently inferred from the tenor of his report that those in power, now eager to lay hold of noxious persons, would certainly not let slip such an opportunity. On Paine's rising to leave, Blake laid his hands on the orator's shoulder, saying, 'You must not go home, or you are a dead man!' and hurried him off on his way to France, whither he was now, in any case bound, to take his seat as French legislator. By the time Paine was at Dover, the officers were in his house or, as his biographer Mr. Cheetham designates it, his 'lurking hole in the purlieus of London;' and some twenty minutes after the Custom House officials at Dover had turned over his slender baggage with, as he thought, extra malice, and he had set sail
