wer or
instrumentally--that is, ministerially.

And above all it is absurd to suppose that a body can create, for no
body acts except by touching or moving; and thus it requires in its
action some pre-existing thing, which can be touched or moved, which
is contrary to the very idea of creation.

Reply Obj. 1: A perfect thing participating any nature, makes a
likeness to itself, not by absolutely producing that nature, but by
applying it to something else. For an individual man cannot be the
cause of human nature absolutely, because he would then be the cause
of himself; but he is the cause of human nature being in the man
begotten; and thus he presupposes in his action a determinate matter
whereby he is an individual man. But as an individual man
participates human nature, so every created being participates, so to
speak, the nature of being; for God alone is His own being, as we
have said above (Q. 7, AA. 1, 2). Therefore no created being can
produce a being absolutely, except forasmuch as it causes "being" in
"this": and so it is necessary to presuppose that whereby a thing is
this thing, before the action whereby it makes its own likeness. But
in an immaterial substance it is not possible to presuppose anything
whereby it is this thing; because it is what it is by its form,
whereby it has being, since it is a subsisting form. Therefore an
immaterial substance cannot produce another immaterial substance like
to itself as regards its being, but only as regards some added
perfection; as we may say that a superior angel illuminates an
inferior, as Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. iv, x). In this way even in
heaven there is paternity, as the Apostle says (Eph. 3:15): "From
whom all paternity in heaven and on earth is named." From which
evidently appears that no created being can cause anything, unless
something is presupposed; which is against the very idea of creation.

Reply Obj. 2: A thing is made from its contrary indirectly (Phys. i,
text 43), but directly from the subject which is in potentiality. And
so the contrary resists the agent, inasmuch as it impedes the
potentiality from the act which the agent intends to induce, as fire
intends to reduce the matter of water to an act like to itself, but
is impeded by the form and contrary dispositions, whereby the
potentiality (of the water) is restrained from being reduced to act;
and the more the potentiality is restrained, the more power is
required in the agent to reduc