A rare plague-year Puritan tract by the ejected London minister Thomas Doolittle, urging repentance and spiritual renewal after the Great Plague of 1665.

DOOLITTLE, Thomas. [Mah ashiv l’Yahweh], or, A Serious Enquiry for a Suitable Return, for Continued Life, in and after a Time of Great Mortality, by a Wasting Plague (Anno 1665). Answered in XIII Directions.
London: Printed by R.I. for J. Johnson, and are to be sold by A. Brewster, at the Threee Bibles at the west end of St. Pauls, and R. Boulter at the Turks-head in Cornhill,, 1666

A rare and powerful Puritan devotional tract written in the immediate aftermath of the Great Plague of London, urging spiritual self-examination and moral reformation as a proper response to survival in a time of mass mortality.

The work takes its Hebrew title from Hosea 14:2 (“Return unto the Lord”), and is structured as thirteen practical “Directions” guiding the reader toward repentance, renewed obedience, and gratitude for preservation of life during the plague year of 1665. It belongs to the intense culture of plague theology that flourished in Restoration London, combining providential interpretation, pastoral exhortation, and eschatological urgency.

8vo. E1 with a paper flaw at foot causing loss of several letters recto and verso; final leaf with marginal chipping and fraying and now detached; some worming to upper and lower inner gutters; water-staining, spotting, and light browning. Contemporary sheep, worn, covers detached. Despite defects, a complete and textually serviceable copy of a very scarce plague imprint.

Provenance:
Elizabeth Bell (contemporary ink signature to front pastedown);
Julia Campbell, 1833 (ink signature to head of title).

Wing D1895. Rare at auction.

Thomas Doolittle was a prominent English Nonconformist minister, tutor, and devotional writer, active during the Restoration and later Stuart periods. Educated at Pembroke College, Oxford, he was ejected from his living at St. Alphage, London Wall, in 1662 under the Act of Uniformity. Thereafter he became a leading figure among London’s Dissenters.

Following the Great Fire of London (1666), Doolittle famously erected illegal preaching-places to replace destroyed churches, defying the Conventicle Acts and drawing repeated harassment from the authorities. He later ran an influential Dissenting academy, training ministers for the Nonconformist cause.

Doolittle was a prolific devotional author, best known for works on repentance, regeneration, and practical godliness. His writings are marked by pastoral warmth, experiential piety, and deep engagement with providential theology. His plague-year tracts, including the present work, are among the most historically resonant survivals of Restoration religious culture.