Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 209

Berkeley's favourite quotation, from ACTS 17:28. Strangely, it is also the last senstence in Malebranche's Recherche 3. 2. 6 -- the section expounding Malebranche;s view that 'we see all things in God'.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 66

The clearest trace of the scholastic tradition in Berkeley's work is his view that in perception we share ideas with God. This is a later version of St Augustine's doctrine of divine illumination, according to which God is the interior light of the human soul. A vision of things as they really are is present in us by virtue of the light that is in us, namely God; it cannot be extracted from sense-experience alone. This view is also clearly related to Malebranche's conception of seeing all things in God. Similarly, in my view Berkeley wants to retain a sense that there is natural necessity in the world. He cannot do it in Locke's mechanistic way, as we say, and he is worried (as Dun Scotus was) by the thought that nothing can be necessary if God could have ordained things otherwise -- or, to put it the other way round, that if there were natural necessities, they would consitute a constraint on the power of God.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 60

Malebranche. There were various problems for Descartes, but among those that attracted most attention was the problem of interaction -- the question how mind and matter can influence each other if they are so different. We know (or think we know) that our bodies more because we will that they should, and that pain will occur if we cut ourselves with a knife. How is this possible? Malebranche saw this difficulty as related to a more general problem how physical things could be said to be causes. He argued that they could now. It was not just that they are inert -- the point that Berkeley makes much of. It was also that there was no coceivable necessary connection between one physical event and another; and for Malebranche there can be no causation without a necessary connection. There is, of course, a necessary connection between the will of God and changes in the world. So the only possible cause is God. As such a cause, God can act so as to move our bodies when we will to move, and to affect our minds when the world collides with us. He also acts to cause a physical event when suitable physical conditions occur. Within this picture the interaction problem fails to arise, since there is no difficulty at all in supposing God capable of affecting either minds or matter on suitable occasions.

Principles Of Human Knowledge - pg. 59

The overall story, as I see it, of how Berkeley stands in relation to the work of these four men is roughly as follows. Malebranche represents an intellectual tradition that stretches back to the scholastics and eventually to St Augustine. Descartes and Locke represents a distinctive philosophical position, informed by the new science. Newton was the new science personified. Berkeley was deeply impressed by Newton's work, and wanted to give it pride of place in his philosophical picture. But he wanted to overtun much of the philosophy of Locke and Descartes, and return as (always still informed by the new science) more nearly to the ways of Malebranche and his tradition.