SOURCE: Vaughan, Alden T. and Edward W. Clark. “Cups of Common Calamity: Puritan Captivity Narratives as Literature and History.” In Puritans among the Indians: Accounts of Captivity and Redemption: 1676-1724, edited by Alden T. Vaughan and Edward W. Clark, pp. 1-28. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1981.

In the following essay, Vaughan and Clark expound on the uniquely religious characteristics and influences of the Puritan captivity narrative.

“It is no new thing for Gods precious ones to drink as deep as others, of the Cup of common Calamity.”

—Preface to Mary Rowlandson, The Soveraignty & Goodness of God, 1682

“Remarkable Mercies should be Faithfully Published, for the Praise of God the Giver.”

—Sermon by John Williams, 1706

“It would be unaccountable stupidity in me,” wrote a former captive of the Indians in 1707, “not to maintain the most Lively and Awful Sense of Divine Rebukes which the most Holy God has seen meet … to...