  Norris first argues for the existence of an ideal counterpart to nature. Since the world is created, “it must of necessity receive its Being from some other Being that was when it self was not” (18). He considers the nature of a being that is capable of bringing existence from absolute privation, and concludes such a being must be infinitely powerful. Relying upon the premise that all action is guided by thought, and that God could not have thought about the world because it did not exist at the time, Norris concludes the ideas that guided God's thought in the creation of the world and its inhabitants must be “their essential Reasons and Natures before they had any in this, nay even from all Eternity…and that there is an Intelligible as well as a Sensible World, truly representative and exhibitive of this,” or “ a fair intelligible Mirrour” (26). The intelligible world is the pattern or model of nature, “since it could no more be its own Exemplary or Formal, than Efficient Cause” (30).