ABSTRACT
What are the implications of all this for the history of evangelicalism? First, some useful observations can be made using David Bebbington’s fourfold grid of conversionism, activism, biblicism and crucicentrism as the standard starting point for modern discussions. It is immediately obvious to any student of the sixteenth or seventeenth century that all four characteristics are rooted in the Reformation, even if they undergo certain developments in later periods. Conversionism is paradigmatic for much of Protestantism after Luther, resting as it does upon the notions of sin, faith and assurance which the reformer himself brought to the fore. It is only necessary to look at the lives of, say, John Calvin, Theodore Beza, William Perkins, William Ames, Thomas Goodwin or John Bunyan (the list could be extended) to see how central is the notion of personal conversion to Protestantism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Indeed, such conversionism is an integral part of the theology these men represented.
