Help with Witsius statement

[fralo4truth]

Dutch theologian Herman Witsius said this in his work Economy of the Covenants under Effectual Calling:

By regeneration a new life is put into the elect, resulting from a gracious union with God and His Spirit. For what the soul is to
the body, that God is to the soul. Morever, this spiritual life may be considered either by way of faculty, and in the first act, in the usual language of the
schools, or by way of operation, and in the second act. In the former respect, it is that inward constitution of the soul whereby it is fitted to exert
those actions which are acceptable to God in Christ by the power of the Spirit uniting it to God, whether such actions immediately flow from that principle
or whether they lie concealed for a time, as fruits in their seed.

Thus you see how he is disecting regeneration according to the ordo. But in the last statement...is he advocating a time gap between regeneration and conversion?

If so, I can't see the scriptures teaching this.

Thanks.

 

[louis_jp]

It sounds to me as if he is making the same point as Charnock:

"It being thus a vital principle, and a habit, therefore the motion to God, and for God, must be... ready in respect of disposition. [The regenerate man] stands ready and disposed to every good work upon God's call. As the habit of sin disposes the soul to every evil work, so the habit of grace prepares it for every good work, and makes it meet for its Master's use....

"This readiness is seminally in every renewed person, yet it does not always actually appear.... the heart of a renewed man has a habitual disposition to the exercise of all grace, because it has the seeds of all grace in it, yet it does not act all alike for want of vigorous occasions...

"This readiness to every service does not actually appear in person newly regenerate. I think the lowest degree of this habit in one newly regenerate is a purpose of heart to cleave to the Lord.... yet to this purpose there may not always be connexed an actual readiness to every service..." (Works, Vol. III, pp. 108-09).