De peste quaestiones duae explicatae

Exception.

read in many places of Scripture that it has hailed, and most vehement winds have blown, and it has thundered horribly through the ministry of angels? But, they say, those examples concerning the plague proposed to us by angels are given as an example, so that we may learn from them to judge rightly regarding intermediate causes and the origin of the plague.

Response.

Indeed, who would deny that whatever things have been written were written so that we might be instructed by them, and that all things which are recounted in the holy scriptures concerning the ministry of angels—not only in the plague but also in famine and other calamities, both for destroying the wicked and for chastising or exercising the good—bring us the greatest utility, so that we may learn to fear and also to love God, who is not tied to the laws of nature itself, as the Stoics thought, and has certain instruments of His judgments, even more formidable than those which fall under our sense? But what you want is not at all achieved from this, namely that we are thus taught that no natural causes are used by the angels themselves to execute the commands of God. What about the fact that Scripture also provides us with examples of the sent plague without any mention of angels being made? For those against whom I am arguing concede that there was a plague from which Hezekiah suffered; yet he is not said to have been struck by angels. The Lord often threatens the plague to sinners through Moses and other Prophets, and there is no doubt that these threats were not at all empty; yet he never mentions that he will always send them through angels. The Psalmist seems to some