In God there is no distinction between speculative reason and practical reason, there is just the Divine Wisdom. However, from our point of view we can distinguish between God as creator in which case "He stands as the artist to his art" and God as "He who governs all the acts and movements that are to be found in each single creature...moving all thing to their due end." (I II93,1) In this second case, the pattern of Divine Wisdom has the character of law.

This law can be know; not in itself, but in its effects. It cannot be comprehended, i.e., we cannot understand it completely. It can only be known in an imperfect manner and not to the same degree by all.

All laws which fit the definition of a law are derived from the eternal law which comes from the Chief Governor and is passed on to the subordinate governors, i.e. natural law and human law.

All contingent acts of nature are subject to the eternal law. "God imprints on the whole of nature the principles of its proper actions."

Perhaps we usually read "subject to a law" as being under the jurisdiction of that law. Thomas certainly uses the phrase with that meaning later in Question 96. However, here, it is better read as "necessarily obedient" to a law.

In this sense, the rational creature is subject to the law in many ways just as any other created thing, but is also subject to the eternal law by knowledge, knowledge of the good. Unlike the irrational creature, man can "break the law". Whereas a lion cannot but act as lions do, man can disobey his natural inclinations (I II 94,3 ad 2) as well as having a darkened or distorted knowledge of the good.

God's role might seem more pervasive than we ordinarily admit. Aristotle, quoting an unnamed source, tells us "all thing have by nature something divine in them" Nicomachean Ethics vii, 13.