 Despite the preeminent place that Thomas Aquinas occupied for these authors, there are significant deviations from the Thomist concept of natural law that are shared by some of them, who at times also directly criticized the “Doctor Angelicus”. Suárez, for instance, says that law has to be seen as something that rules the behavior of beings capable of free decisions (De legibus I iii 2); therefore, Thomas’ concept of an eternal law that rules the whole universe can be understood as a law only in a metaphorical sense. There are still ongoing debates as to whether eternal law can be seen as the theological basis of all other kinds of law (Schweighöfer 2018: 234–256). Natural law, for Thomas, on the one hand, is known to humans because of their participation as rational beings in eternal law, but, on the other, it is at least partially shared with animals (Summa theologiae Ia IIae qu. 95 art. 4 ad 1; IIa IIae qu. 57 art. 3 co) in parallel to Roman Law (Digest 1,1,1,4). Its role for Thomas was labeled as something like a “style”, i.e., a universal principle (Westerman 1998: 81) governing animate nature. For Suárez it becomes a device to rule the behavior of humans as rational beings who are responsible for their activities. It not only contains the most general principles of law, leaving the more detailed regulations to human law, but also everything that follows logically from these principles; otherwise not even the ten commandments would belong to natural law. According to Suárez, natural law is the voice of right reason which effects human behavior via man’s conscience, and 