  Norris integrates the thought of his predecessors—Descartes, Malebranche, Suarez, Augustine, Aquinas and Plato—in a manner centering on the Christian God. God is truth, love and the aim of all religious and practical life. Norris' ambition of completing Malebranche's project is reflected in his arguments to establish the existence of the divine ideas and their locus in the mind of God, or the intelligible world. His detailed discussion of the eternal truths is a further expansion upon Malebranche's philosophy. The defense of Descartes' real distinction proof is enlightening because it renders transparent the assumption of abstractive knowledge that might have aided contemporary readers' understanding of the proof. If Norris did not venture further into the philosophical, political and scientific debates of his own time, the explanation lies in his advice to never study out of vanity. Worldly knowledge, such as knowledge of history or languages, is a waste of one's time.  Norris was dedicated to the cause of knowledge for Christianity's sake, and he saw his own work, as well as his predecessors', as attempting to realize fully knowledge of the Pauline Doctrine, stated at Acts 17:28, that in God “we live, move and have our being.”