William Blake's illustrations of On the Morning of Christ's Nativity

[4] The illustrations themselves do not make the dating any easier- the edges of the "Thomas set" were trimmed before sale at Sotheby's, leaving "18" or "180" on most of the sheets.

[8] The sequence of the illustrations is also a topic of scholarly dispute: the mountings of the Thomas set were inscribed on their backs with numbers 1–6, but these were added during or after the 1872 Sotheby's sale, and so are unlikely to follow Blake's intended order.

[9] Butlin, and nearly all subsequent scholars, have rejected this, as much commentary has centered upon Blake's use of similar images to frame the sequence.

Butlin instead rearranges the "original" sequence as 1-2-4-5-3-6, moving The Flight of Moloch to second to last, so that it matches the order of corresponding verses in Milton's poem.

Behrendt adopts a 1-2-5-3-4-6 order, seeing a thematic progression from the destruction of classical aesthetics, to the Old Testament cruelty of Moloch (who resembles Blake's Urizen), to Satan himself.

[13] In that poem, the messianic Orc, a symbol of pure creative energy, rises against the repressive institutions of Church and state.

The similarity of the orifice that frames the child to the shape of the stable in the other illustrations underscores the purpose of Christ's birth, and foreshadows the harrowing of hell.