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. (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. (with) A review of The theory of the earth and of its proofs, especially in reference to scripture: The sacred Theory of the earth

London: R[oger]. N[orton]. for Walter Kettilby, at the Bishop's-Head in S. Paul's Church- Yard, 1697. Third edition [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). Bound in contemporary full calf with hand written title on spine. Three Folio volumes bound together    31.5 x 19cm. (pt1&2). Π2 A4 a4,B-Z⁴ Aa-Ff4 (pt3&4). A6 B-U4 (Review). X-Z4, Aa6  Third editions of all parts.  /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."  . 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. 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). "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.'.