The notion of a favor of God toward all men invariably is accompanied by or leads to the Arminian doctrine of a love for all in the gospel and of a desire of God to save all by the gospel, which love and desire to save are then dependent upon the will of the sinner. This doctrine stands condemned in the official creeds of the Reformed and Presbyterian churches, the Canons of Dordt and the Westminster Confession. The theory of a restraint of sin that the PRC find objectionable is that which maintains a gracious operation of the Holy Spirit upon the heart of the sinner, without regenerating him, so that some good is preserved in the fallen sinner. As a result of this gracious operation upon the heart of the unregenerate, it is held, he is able to perform works that are truly good, albeit only in the realm of society. There is also agreement between North and the PRC in their view of history, leaving aside for the moment their differing eschatologies.
North sees common grace as being significant for history.
In this aspect of his common grace theory also, North differs sharply from the prevailing view. Many advocates of common grace attribute to common grace a positive purpose and value altogether apart from the church. Throughout their history, the PRC have fought a lonely battle in the Dutch Reformed community against the concept of history that the Dutch Reformed theologian Abraham Kuyper spun from his theory of common grace. On Kuyper's view of history, God has two independent purposes with history. One is the development of their culture by an ungodly world by means of common grace.