Analysis Of The Sovereignty And Goodness Of God Mary Rowlandson

Sovereignty and Goodness of God

Neal Salisbury writes The Sovereignty of Goodness of God in the year of 1997. Salisbury edited the narrative of the captivity and restoration of Mary Rowlandson with related documents to this story. Mary Rowlandson from this narrative for four reasons: explain in detail what happened throughout captivity, explain The King Philip’s War, tell people how God helped her through the captivity, and to share her experience in general with all people who may study about this topic.

Sovereignty and Goodness of God is a narrative by Mary Rowlandson. This narrative begins on February 10, 1675. Native Americans came into Massachusetts and took Mary Rowlandson and her three children captive. During this process, she is

split up from two of her kids but luckily can be beside her youngest daughter. All of the Rowlandson family in injured and in a lot of pain. Once they arrive to the settlement, Mary is given to King Phillip, she is reunited with her other children and given a bible. Soon after they captivate more settlers, they head north, in which Mary’s family is separated once again. They keep traveling through the Connecticut River, traveling east, near King Phillip’s house, cross the Baquaug River, Sudbury, back through Lancaster, Concord, and Boston. Mary Rowlandson was captive for 12 weeks but is reunited with her family back in Boston.
Mary Rowlandson explains in great detail what happened throughout her captivity.

She explains in the First Remove about their bodies: “Now away we must go with those barbarous creatures, with our bodies wounded and bleeding, and our hearts no less than our bodies. ” After reading this statement, it really showed me how brutally beaten they were when the Native Americans came into Lancaster. She explained the Natives’ to be “barbarous creatures”, someone that I would not want to be around and I would be very afraid of. In the Second Remove, they have stopped travelling: “After this it quickly began to snow, and when night came on, they stopped, and now down I must sit in the snow, by a little fire, and a few boughs behind me, with my sick child in my lap; and calling much for water, being now (through the wound) fallen into a violent fever.1” Rowlandson explains here how the weather is and how no one was protected from this bad weather, people were becoming sick even herself and her child. In the Forth Remove, Mary has to apart from her daughter so now she has no company along with her. “And now I must part with that little company I had. Here I parted from my daughter Mary (whom I never saw again till I saw her in Dorchester, returned from captivity), and from four little cousins and neighbors, some of which I never saw afterward: the Lord only knows the end of them.1” Mary Rowlandson continues to explain in depth about each Remove thorough the Twentieth Remove. She explains

the food they had to eat, more about the Natives’ and even each place that they travel too.
Throughout her narrative, Rowlandson explains the King Philip’s War. The King Philips war was from 1675-1676. The Sovereignty of Goodness of God is the most detailed description of King Philips War. Mary Rowlandson is the eyewitness of the Native Americans captivating all these colonists and American Indians. This war took a toll on the whole settlement. In Lancaster, as a puritan, you are raised to think of the Natives as the devil.
I think Mary Rowlandson wanted to share her experience in general with all people who may study this topic and to be able to continue history. Rowlandson wrote this narrative for people to be informed how they were treated and what taught her how to survive. She really expressed her feelings with discussing each person she came in contact with and explained each place that they were held captive at. She wanted to tell people that she was a local minister’s wife and how she was shot during the captivity.
Mary Rowlandson discusses how God helped her through captivity.

She is given a bible and I think this is what starts her beliefs in God. She first mentions God in the Third Remove: “Yet the Lord still shewed mercy to me, and helped me; and as he wounded me with one hand, so he healed me with the other.1” She explains in the quote that everything happens for a reason and what God does can be good and bag things but still help her through it in some kind of way. “The first week of my being among them, I hardly eat any thing; the second week, I found my stomach grow very faint for want of something; and yet it was very hard to get down their filthy trash; but the third week, though I could think how formerly my stomach would turn against this or that, and I could starve and die before I could eat such things, yet they were sweet and savory to my taste.1” This quote is taken from the Fifth Remove. Mary explains that she is to the point where she will eat anything to stay alive for her family and kids. Being able to eat this food with out her getting sick is a blessing from God to Mary. At the very end of her narrative, she says this: “When the Lord had brought his people to this, that they saw no help in any thing but himself, then he takes the quarrel into his own hand; and tho’ they had made a pit, as deep as hell for the Christians that summer, yet the Lord hurled themselves into it.1” The end of her narrative is obviously going to end with a summary of the past several

months of her captivity but she talks about how believing in God, got her through the three months. Mary is confident of God’s power and forgiveness. She really speaks out to her readers in the entire book of how God and reading the bible helped her and others.
If I experienced captivity I would want anyone and everyone to know. I know people would want to learn about this time and experience from a person with a true eyewitness. If I were to tell people about my experience, I would conduct in a academic conference, in a question and answer format. If persons asked me questions, I would answer all questions as thoroughly as I could and also tell them what helped me through my process whether it was the bible like Mary Rowlandson or someone or something else. My motive for sharing this new would be to continue history and make people aware of what happened during this time. People who study about this, I would want them to know as much as possible on the piece of history.