a mostly german debate on conversion and salvation The position of Steinbart on conversion, however, did not lack precedents. In Reformed theology, especially in England, relevant views had been put forward. Thus, one can see that Steinbart was preceded and maybe influenced by other Reformed theologians in his theological argumentation. At executions in England at the mid-seventeenth century Puritan ministers sought conversions to the very end, even at the steps to the gallows, and sometimes succeeded. These conversions could be used in spiritual and theological influence both through the scene at the execution, and there especially the words of the condemned, and through printed pamphlets.669 The development at least to a part came to go another route. As early as 1658 a sermon in London against deathbed repentance was said to have claimed that righteousness rather should be a lifelong quality.670 St Dismas, the criminal saved at Golgotha was discussed in several sermons some years later: his repentance was an exceptional miracle not to be repeated, he could not be saved in some more ordinary way. He might also have been converted while in gaol waiting for the execution. A repentance on the deathbed might well be invalid.671 According to Andrea McKenzie the ideas that salvation could not be left too late or that St Dismas could not serve as an example for contemporary criminals could be heard with increasingly frequency from seventeenth– and eighteenth– century Anglicans.672 Against this view, however, Robert Walker has found that during the latter half of the eighteenth century ”[t]he Anglican position on deathbed repentance had softened somewhat”. He, however, adds that there in this question existed a clear difference between the softer and more compassionate and the hardliners who disregarded the experience of the sinner on the cross while judging virtues and holy life as necessary for salvations.673 Gregory Scholtz has found that in the eighteenth–century Anglican sermon generally stipulated not only faith 669 Lake and Questier 1996 p 89 sq, Lake 1994 esp p 319 sqq. 670 Evelyn 1955 III:213. 671 Evelyn 1955 IV:370 sq, 577, V:116, 146 sq, 186, 570. 672 McKenzie 2007 p 183 sq, 204. 673 Walker 1982 p 27 sqq (quotation p 27). 192
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