a mostly german debate on conversion and salvation cult meetings with persons concerned with their salvation – while their opponents had greater experience with that difficult task? The possibility of such an underlying discrepancy of perspectives could be of interest and the experience of Charles Wesley at Newgate supports the idea, but it is probably close to impossible to try to find an answer of some scientific certainty. Taking the Lutheran milieu as an example, its spirituality and theology at the beginning of the eighteenth century was mostly orthodox. Similar views can probably be said about most confessions and scenes, with some exceptions such as the British Isles with a more complex theological and ecclesiastical situation. The influx of pietistic and later enlightened ideas then complicated much and in this particular field made the site of execution to a battlefield where the point of contest, at least in Germany, was the concept of conversion and thus also the understanding of the executed person facing eternity. At the centre of this debate is the concept of conversion. The different interpretations concerned several areas such as law and liturgy and the conversion were treated as a matter of interest for both church and state. The state’s possible interest of the conversion was an important side-issue in the predominantly theological debate. Any interest the state might have turns mostly on the image of the converted. Was it in the state’s interest to produce a joyfully converted person, shining with eagerness to meet God? Would the state have preferred somebody who had not yet left the earth and was weighed down with sorrow for the sins she had committed? Or would an unconverted heathen, preferably desperate and possibly on the road to hell, have served the interests of the state best? In these controversies are also implied different views of the state. Has the state any religious obligations and identity or is it solely a secular entity? For some who held positions of authority, the idea that longing for heaven could be a motive for murder or other crimes probably not only sounded extreme, almost insane, but was to an increasing extent genuinely incomprehensible. This lack of understanding made it easier to act harshly, to increase pain, or even to take actions that seemingly endangered salvation. Once the search for legislative solutions had begun, 217
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