Gill, Kuyper, and Bavinck: immediate regeneration as a dogmatic position

From Sovereign Grace and the Scope of Election: A Comparative Examination of Attainment Theology and Grace Theology, with Particular Attention to the Question of Whether God's Elect Are Found Among All Nations and Religions

John Gill, the great Particular Baptist theologian, taught that regeneration is the immediate work of the Spirit upon the soul, the implantation of a principle of life prior to and productive of faith (A Body of Doctrinal Divinity). Abraham Kuyper argued the same at length in The Work of the Holy Spirit, and the Dutch Reformed tradition after him debated "immediate regeneration" as a serious dogmatic position, with Herman Bavinck (Reformed Dogmatics, volume 4) carefully distinguishing regeneration as the Spirit's direct implanting of life from calling and conversion as its outworking under the word. The distinction between regeneration and conversion on which this entire study rests is, in other words, not a sectarian invention; it is a recognized structure within classical Reformed dogmatics, here applied with fewer reservations.