851J Thomas Burnet (at Charter House.) 1635?-1715 

The theory of the earth: containing an account of the original of the earth, and of all the general changes which it hath already undergone or is to undergo till the consummation of all things. The two first books concerning the deluge and concerning paradise. (Wing; B5953)

  Bound with

The theory of the earth: containing an account of the original of the earth, and of all the general changes which it hath already undergone, or is to undergo till the consummation of all things. The two last books, concerning the burning of the world, and concerning the new heavens and new earth. (Wing; B5954A)

“may be the most comprehensive and accurate epitome ever presented in pictorial form-for it presents both the content of Burnet’s narrative and his own internal debate about the nature of time and history.” 

(both titles) London : Printed by R[oger]. N[orton]. for Walter Kettilby, at the Bishop’s-Head in S. Paul’s Church- Yard,1697  Price $3,300 

Two Folio volumes bound together  31.5 x 19cm. (pt 1& 2). Π2 A4 a4,B-Z⁴ Aa-Ff4 (pt3&4) A⁶ B-Z⁴ Aa⁶.   Third editions of both parts.  Additional engraved title pages. Title page printed in black with double border. Separate title page for the Second Book. Contains eleven engraved figures in the first, three in the second book. Two double page engravings of the earth (Western and Eastern Hemispheres), depicting the world as it was known then with California as an island, and one engraving in book three.

In Stephen Jay Gould’s Time’s Arrow Time’s Cycle, Professor Gould makes the following comment of Burnet’s Frontispiece. (it) “may be the most comprehensive and accurate epitome ever presented in pictorial form-for it presents both the content of Burnet’s narrative and his own internal debate about the nature of time and history.”   The first two parts were published in 1681 in Latin under the title “Telluris Theoria Sacra,” and three years later in its English translation; the second part, The Two Last Books containing the burning of the world, and concerning the new heavens and new earth, appeared in 1689 (1690 in English). The Review was published in 1690.Bound in contemporary full calf with hand written title on spine.

 

 “Observation played only a minimal part in Thomas Burnet’s Telluris Theoria Sacra (1681), the English version of which was published three years later. The earth, he believed, was originally as smooth as an egg, and the Deluge caused by the crust caving in (and)great fragments fell down into the abyss, and the subterranean waters rushed upwards and covered the globe, and then slowly retreated again to fill the chasms that had been caused. [His calculations of the amount of water on Earth’s surface resulted in his belief that there was not enough to account for the Flood.] Burnet, who associated the terrestrial disorder with the Fall of Man and the ensuing curse on the earth, constructed his theory from what he found in the Bible, and then filled in the gaps by plausible conjecture. Moses had imputed the Deluge to a disruption of the abyss, and St. Peter had accounted for it by the fact that the earth was obnoxious to absorption in water. ‘But it was below the dignity of those sacred pen–men,’ Burnet explained, ‘to shew us the causes of this disruption: this is left to the enquiries of men.’ It was in fact part of the divine plan that men should use their reason, and by giving us merely the bare facts God intended ‘to excite our curiosity and inquisitiveness after the methods by which such things are brought to pass.’

Thus encouraged, Burnet let his fancy roam, and arrived at what, in 1681, was perhaps as good a guess as anyone else’s. But already his traditional assumption that mountains and seas were the marks of disorder after the Fall was becoming old–fashioned. […] One was or another, Burnet’s book provoked a considerable controversy, and called forth some ingenious theories, such as that of Edmund Halley (elaborated by William Whiston) that the Flood was caused by the earth passing through the tail of a comet.

“But if Burnet could be confuted as a man of science, he stood head and shoulders above his critics as a writer. The Sacred Theory shows how far a confident and rhythmical prose may go in making a reader accept statements that are very slenderly supported by the evidence. So convinced was Burnet himself that it is sometimes hard to remember that what he describes so vividly never actually occurred. In some passages we might be listening to an eye–witness account: The pressure of a great mass of earth falling into the abyss… could not but impel the water with so much strength, as would carry it up to a great height in the air, and to the top of anything that lay in its way, any eminency, high fragment, or new mountain. And then rolling back again, it would sweep down with whatsoever it rush’d upon, woods, buildings, living creatures, and carry them all headlong into the great gulph. Sometimes a mass of water would be quite struck off and separate from the rest, and tossed through the air like a flying river; but the common motion of the waves was to climb up the hills or inclin’d fragments; and then return into the valleys and deeps again, with a perpetual fluctuation going and coming, ascending and descending, ‘till the violence of them being spent by degrees, they settled at last in the places allotted for them…

“It will be observed how Burnet passes from ‘could’ and ‘would’ to the simple assertion of ‘was’ and ‘were;’ but the reader ‘stands secure amidst a falling world’ because Burnet pursues his great argument with a Miltonic grandeur and reverence that give to his wildest descriptions an air of authenticity. His prose is very far from the norm of the period; but it is significant that in an age which was becoming less imaginative in both poetry and prose, some of the most sustained flights of the imagination were achieved by writers who, under the influence of the Old Testament or the Book of Revelation, contemplated such cataclysmic events as the Flood, or dwelt pindarically with Pomfret and others on the Last Day and the General Conflagration and ensuing Judgment.”

 (J. Sutherland, English Literature of the Late Seventeenth Century, page 389-391)

“Thomas Burnet was educated at Cambridge University, where he came under the influence of Ralph Cudworth and John Tillotson, and was elected a Fellow of Christ’s College in 1657. He was appointed Master of the Charterhouse in 1685, and is said to have been thought of at one time as a possible successor to Tillotson as Archbishop of Canterbury, but to have been passed over because of suspicions about his orthodoxy. Such suspicions, based on his Sacred Theory of the Earth, were no doubt increased by the publication of his Archaeologiae Philosophicae (1692), where he gave a non–literal interpretation of the first book of Genesis.” (Sutherland, page 389)


Anyone interested in this book, should read Stephen Jay Goulds” Time’s arrow, time’s cycle. Myth and metaphor in the discovery of geological time. 1987 


To some extent influenced by Descartes’ writings on the creation of the earth in “Principia philosophiae” (1644), Descartes’ mechanical philosophy provided a foundational framework for Burnet’s theory, enabling him to propose a naturalistic explanation for Earth’s formation that aligned with his theological views.

“Burnet’s attempt to reconcile Descartes’ mechanical cosmogony with biblical narratives. Descartes, in his Principia Philosophiae (1644), proposed that the Earth was once a star that eventually crusted over, with features like mountains and ocean basins resulting from the Earth’s drying and cracking, releasing subterranean gases and water that collapsed the crust, making it irregular. Burnet found this hypothesis appealing, particularly the idea that God allowed the Earth to create itself without direct supernatural intervention. He integrated this mechanical explanation with the biblical account of creation, suggesting that natural processes, such as the drying Earth cracking open and releasing waters, were in alignment with divine foresight, eliminating the need for miraculous intervention”  The Linda Hall Library

Thomas Burnet was criticized on those grounds by Roger North.  Isaac La Peyrère’s views included the idea of the Flood not being universal, and Burnet’s theory was in part intended to answer him on that point. Isaac Newton admired Burnet for his theological approach to geological processes but was rejected by Burnet, in particular regarding Newton’s suggestion that God had originally created longer days.


From preface to the First Book: “Having given an account of this whole work in the first Chapter, and of the method of either Book, whereof this Volume consists, in their proper places, there remains not much to be said here to the Reader. This Theory of the Earth may be call’d Sacred, because it is not the common Philosophy of the Earth, or of the Bodies that compose it, but respects only the great Turns of Fate, and the Revolutions of our Natural World; such as are taken notice of in the Sacred Writings, and are truley the Hinges upon which the Providence of this Earth moves; or whereby it opens and shuts the several successive scenes wherof it is made up. This English Edition is the same in substance with the Latin, though, I confess, ’tis not so properly a Translation, as a new Composition upon the same ground, there being several additional Chapters in it; and several new-moulded.”

From the Introduction of the First Book: “Since I was first inclin’d to the Contemplation of Nature, and took pleasure to trace out the Causes of Effects, and the dependance of one thing upon another in the visible Creation, I had always, methought, a particular curiosity to look back into the first Sources and ORIGINAL of Things; tand to view in my mind, so far as I was able, the Beginning and Progress of a RISING WORLD… But when we speak of a Rising World, and the Contemplation of it, we do not mean this of the Great Universe; for who can describe the Original of that? But we speak of the Sublunary World, This Earth and its dependencies, which rose out of a Chaos about six thousand years ago; And seeing it hath faln to our lot to act upon this Stage, to have our present home and habitation here, it seems most resonable, and the place design’d by Providence where we should first imploy our thoughts to understand the works of God and Nature.”

From preface to the Third Book: “… The Conflagration of the World. The question will be only about the bounds and limits of the Conflagration, the Causes and the Manner of it. These I have fix’d according to the truest measures I could take from Scripture, and from Nature. I differ, I believe, from the common Sentiment in this, that, in following S. Peter’s Philosophy, I suppose, that the burning of the Earth will be a true Liquefaction or dissolution of it, as to the exterior Region. And that this lays a foundation for New Heavens and a New Earth; which seems to me as plain a doctrine in Christian Religion, as the Conflagration itself.”


Wing; B5953, & B5954A

https://datb.cerl.org/estc/R25316

https://datb.cerl.org/estc/R226801

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