 Norris had taken an occasionalist position, maintaining that God is the immediate cause of pleasure for us and is therefore the sole and proper object of our love. Creatures are therefore merely the occasional causes of pleasing effects in us, and our love of creatures is inferior and secondary to our love of God. Accordingly he distinguishes two kinds of love: love of God or benevolence and love of creatures or concupiscence, claiming that desire only pertains to the love of God. In response Lady Masham denies Norris’s distinction between love of God and love of creatures, insisting that desire pertains to our love of created things. She argues that our love of God comes not from a divinely instilled idea of God in our minds, but from observing the world around us, whence we conclude, rationally, that we owe love to its creator, God. Her fundamental objection to Norris’s occasionalism is that it undermines the basis of morality because, by denigrating God’s works, it destroys the bonds of human society and the very basis of Christian morality. In opposition to Norris, Lady Masham emphasises the importance of practical morality, arguing that it is integral to religious conduct.