I can speak to this question in American Christianity. The short version is that the person from 1750 would have a theocentric view of Heaven, and the person from 1890 would not.

First off, the idea of heaven will change dramatically depending on what major denomination that layperson is from. Dante's *Divina Commedia* succeeding in shaping the imagination of Western Christian as far as Hell was concerned. The enduring images of Hell as a place of inescapable eternal punishment, full of suffering bodies, tormented souls, demons as torturers, ironic punishments, and, of course, all the people who were ever mean to Christians getting their skin melted off-- all traceable to the *Inferno*.

But Dante failed to exert the same kind of controlling influence on Christian conceptions of Heaven. Part of this is because there were already lots of medieval stories about going to Heaven, or having a dream or vision of heaven, and they differed. (I'll let someone who's actually qualified to talk about this stuff fill in here). The other was that the Reformation and English Reformation fundamentally changed Christian conceptions of the afterlife by removing Purgatory. While Martin Luther's beliefs changed over his lifetime, the legacy of the Reformation effectively removed Purgatory from the popular imagination, especially in Anglophone culture.

The English Reformation tried to push the limits of the Reformation by becoming even less Catholic, stripping away any unnecessary, potentially corrupt theology, and paring down. After 1700, popular Anglophone Protestantism celebrates being simple, pure, modest, disciplined, and individualistic. It emerges against the backdrop of the 16th and 17th century religious wars raging across Europe, costing around 10 million lives.

As a result, Heaven in radical Protestant culture reflects 1) a commitment to hyper-Reformed doctrine focusing on God's sovereignty, 2) an opposition to Catholic doctrinal extra-ness, and 3) a shared experience of life being precarious, uncertain, and full of loss. Thus, Heaven is overwhelmingly focused on God, and defined by *safety*. It is a space where the saints eternally worship God, with their rest, safety, and fellowship guarded by God's total control and dominion. Heaven is the ultimate safe space. The saints are finally made perfect, with the last of their sin nature stripped away. God rules supreme, so there is no more war or violence. In Heaven, Increase Mather preaches, the faithful will experience "wondrous Consolations" for their "various Evils" they endured. They will "never be guilty of any Sin, in Word, Thought, or Deed"; their faculties will be "so enlarged, and their capacities so perfected" that they can finally see "far into the dazzling Perfections of Almighty GOD, and Heavenly Things." Heaven is where you can finally see things as they really are.

Heaven is a site of reward and reunion. The most common image of Heaven is receiving a "Crown of Glory." In Michael Wigglesworth's *Day of Doom* (1666), Christ separates the worthy from the unworthy, and addresses the faithful:

> "You bore the Cross, you suffer'd lossOf all for My Name's sakeReceive the Crown that's now your own:Come, and a kingdom take."

And Heaven is a space where believers can be reunited with their lost loved ones. Heaven is mentioned particularly frequently in the journals of mothers who have lost their children. Anne Bradstreet famously works through the untimely death of her grandchildren by reminding herself that:

> "How oft with disappointment I have metWhen I on fading things my hope have set...But yet a little while, and I shall go to thee;Mean time my throbbing heart's cheered up with this:Thou with thy Saviour art in endless bliss."

So in the seventeenth century, Heaven is the safe haven that weary pilgrims journey towards, narrowly escaping the flames of Hell on their way. The eighteenth century complicates things considerably.

Two movements changed the way Heaven was imagined. First, ideas from various Enlightenment thinkers migrate from Europe, along with a lot of non-radical Protestants, some German Catholics, and Jews. Second, Jonathan Edward's Great Awakening transforms lay religion. Both worked together to make Christianity more focused on personal experience. Jonathan Edwards, A.K.A. "The Last Puritan and the First Evangelical", read cutting-edge Enlightenment ideas about the human imagination and how language shapes it. The end result is that Heaven gets really trippy.

The radical Protestants saw Heaven as the safe harbor after a life of danger and sadness. Enlightened skeptics, Deists, and wags included Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John "Salvation" Murray (early proponent of universal salvation, distinct from his longtime theological adversary, orthodox Presbyterian John "Damnation" Murray). These tended to focus less on describing Heaven, and more on arguing about Heaven's efficacy to motivate good moral behavior. They saw Heaven as the carrot, Hell as the stick, to motivate the populace of a new body politic. The revivalists of the Great Awakening, by contrast, saw Heaven as a ecstatic experience.

Though Edwards is best-known for his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," that's only one-half of his theological-literary style (that becomes HUGELY influential). He tends to swing between "sweetness and light" and "hellfire," with the goal of really making the believers *feel* both of them. His sermon "Heaven is a Place of Love" is full of superlatives: "infinities of infinities" of pleasure, the ultimate dissolution of the self into God, sweetness so sharp it cuts like a knife.

> "Here is joy unspeakable indeed... Love is a sweet principle, especially divine love. It is a spring of sweetness. But here the spring shall become a river, and an ocean. All shall stand about the God of glory, the fountain of love, as it were opening their bosoms to be filled with those effusions of love... Every saint there is a note in a concert of music which sweetly harmonizes with every other note, and all together employed in praising God and the Lamb..."

Edwards' descriptions are so stirring he has to pause and assure the audience that the love-relations in heaven will have "propriety," even as the saints experience an inexpressible intimacy with God and each other.