Genesis 19:13

13.The Lord has sent us to destroy it. This place teaches us, that the angels are the ministers of God’s wrath, as well as of his grace. Nor does it form any objection to this statement, that elsewhere the latter service is peculiarly ascribed to holy angels: as when the Apostle says, they were appointed for the salvation of those whom God had adopted as sons. (Hebrews 1:14.) And the Scripture, in various places, testifies, that the guardianship of the pious is committed to them, (Psalms 91:11;) while, on the other hand, it declares that God executes his judgments by reprobate angels. (Psalms 78:49.) For it must be maintained, that God causes his elect angels to preside over those judgments which he executes by means of the reprobate. For it would be absurd to attribute to devils, the honor of presiding over the judgments of God, since they do not yield him voluntary obedience; but rather, while raging contumaciously against him, are yet reluctantly compelled to become his executioners. Let us therefore know, that it is not foreign to the office of elect angels, to descend armed for the purpose of executing Divine vengeance and of inflicting punishment. As the angel of the Lord destroyed, in one night, the army of Sennacherib which besieged Jerusalem, (2 Kings 19:35;) so also the angel of the Lord appeared to David with his drawn sword, when the pestilence was raging against the people. (2 Samuel 24:16.) But, as I have before said, the angels repeat what they had previously said to Abraham, concerning the cry of Sodomy that they may the more urgently impel Lot, by a detestation of the place, to take his flight, and may induce him by the fear of the wrath of God, to seek for safety.