The Note

" While never losing sight of God's sovereignty in dispensing His grace, he never hesitated to proclaim His good will to all.  He believed on the same authority the electiveness of God's covenant purposes, and the indiscriminateness of His gospel calls.  No preacher was more careful not to fetter the sovereignty of God on the one hand, and on the other, not to limit the overtures of His grace.  It is strange that those who believe the doctrine of election and who preach it, and who also believe, and in their teaching insist on, the necessity of regeneration in order to faith, should be deemed incapable of honestly, heartily, and hopefully inviting sinners, in the Lord's name, to Christ…He has been in the habit, too, of thinking of God's will in its most unaccountable volitions.  He is therefore quite prepared to find mysteriousness investing in it; and its incomprehensibleness is to him but an evidence of its divinity. "

The Apostle of the North – The Life and Labours of Rev John MacDonald D.D. of Ferintosh, by Rev John Kennedy D.D., p.214 (Free Prebyterian Publications, Glasgow, 1978).