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Antichrist,"' 1645—Wood misnames Blackwood 'Charles' for 'Christopher.' 3. 'A Moderate Answer to the Two Questions: (1) Whether there be sufficient Ground from Scripture to warrant the Conscience of a Christian to present his Infants to the Sacrament of Baptism; (2) Whether it be not sinful for a Christian to receive the Sacrament in a Mixt Assembly,' 1645. 4. 'An Answer to Mr. Tombes his Letter in Vindication of the Birth-priviledge of Believers and their issue,' 1646. 5. 'Testimony of the Ministers of Stafford to Solemn League,' 1648. 6. 'Vindiciæ Fœderis, a Treatise of the Covenant of God with Mankind,' 1653. 7. 'Infant Baptism maintain'd in its Latitude,' 1653. 8. 'The Covenant Sealed, or a Treatise of the Sacrament of both Covenants,' 1655. 9. 'Postscript to the Rev. and Learned Mr. Richard Baxter,' 1655–trenchantly answered by Baxter. 10. 'Mr. Jo. Humphrey's Second Vindication of a Disciplinary Anti-erastian, Orthodox, Free Admission to the Lord's Supper, taken into consideration,' 1656; and other pamphlets and occasional sermons. 'Ebenezer, or Profitable Truths after Pestilential Times,' 1666, which is assigned to him by Wood and by Brook, was not his, but by another Thomas Blake, who was ejected from East Hoadley, Sussex (Palmer, iii. 320).
Blake died at Tamworth, and was interred in his own church on 11 June 1657. His funeral sermon was preached by Anthony Burgesse, and was published in 1658, along with an oration by Samuel Shaw, then schoolmaster at Tamworth. It is entitled 'Paul's Last Farewell, or a Sermon preached at the Funerall of that godly and learned Minister of Jesus Christ, Mr. Thomas Blake, by Anthony Burgesse: appended, A Funerall Oration at the death of the most desired Mr. Blake, by Mr. Samuel Shaw, then Schoolmaster at the Free School at Tamworth,' 1658. In the 'Oration' Blake is thus described: 'His kindness towards you could not be considered without love, his awfull gravity and secretly commanding presence without reverence, nor his conversation without imitation. To see him live was a provocation to a godly life; to see him dying might have made any one weary of living. When God restrained him from this place (which was always happy in his company but now), he made his chamber a church and his bed a pulpit, in which (in my hearing) he offered many a heavenly prayer for you.'
[Wood's Athenae, ed. Bliss, iii. 431-3; Brook's Puritans, iii. 269-71; local researches; Blake's Works.]
BLAKE, WILLIAM (1773–1821), dissenting minister, was born at Crewkerne on 29 March 1773, and was the second son of the Rev. William Blake (born on 7 July 1730, died on 29 March 1799), who had been a pupil of Doddridge at Northampton (1749), and who was presbyterian minister at Crewkerne from 1754 (ordained 11 May 1757) till 29 July 1798. His son William, also educated at Northampton in 1790 under Horsey, preached first at Yeovil in 1793, and, on his father's resignation, succeeded him at Crewkerne, where he remained till his death on 18 Feb. 1821. Rev. William Blake, jun., of Crewkerne, was the last presbyterian minister of his name, from a family conspicuous in the ministry of West of England dissent [see Blake, Malachi]. By his time the original Calvinism of the race had changed to Arianism, and he himself became humanitarian in his Christology. He was a man of wealth and influence. He published: 1. 'Devotional Services for the Public Worship of the One True God,' &c., Sherborne, 1812 (anonymous; eight services, with occasional and family prayers and 250 hymns). 2. 'Private Judgment,' Taunton, 1810 (sermon before Southern Unitarian Society). Like his father and grandfather he was twice married, and left descendants (the Blake pedigree is puzzling to trace from the constant recurrence of the same baptismal names). His elder brother, Malachi Blake, M.D., of Taunton, survived till 1843 ; his portrait is in the Taunton and Somerset Hospital, where the 'Blake Ward' is called from him.
[Blake pedigree, MS.; Monthly Repository, 1821; Murch's Hist. Presb. and Gen. Bapt. Churches in West of England, 1835, pp. 217, 245.]
BLAKE, WILLIAM (1757–1827), poet and painter, was born on 28 Nov. 1757, at 28 Broad Street, Golden Square. His father was a hosier in sufficiently comfortable circumstances to give some furtherance to his son's bent for art. At ten he was sent to Par's drawing school in the Strand—the best of its day, where he drew from the antique. His father also bought him casts and gave him occasional small sums of money to make a collection of prints for study, and the auctioneer (Langford) would sometimes knock down a cheap lot to 'his little connoisseur' with friendly haste in those days of 'three| penny bids.' Raphael, Michael Angelo, Giulio Romano, Dürer, &c. were the objects of the boy's choice at a time when Guido and the Caracci were the idols of the connoisseur. Blake began to write original verse in his twelfth year, some of which was afterwards
