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man of dogmatic religion who improperly invaded the magisterium of science. The Reverend Thomas Burnet (1635–1715), although unknown outside professional circles today, wrote one of the most influential books of the late seventeenth century—
Telluris theoria sacra
, or
The Sacred Theory of the Earth
, a work in four sections,with part one on the deluge of Noah, part two on the preceding paradise, part three on the forthcoming “burning of the world,” and part four “concerning the new heavens and new earth,” or paradise regained after the conflagration. This book not only became a “bestseller” in its own generation, but gained lasting fame as a primary inspiration (largely, but not entirely, in criticism) for two of the greatest and most comprehensive works of eighteenth-century intellectual history—the
Scienza nuova (New Science)
of Giambattista Vico in 1725, the foundation for historical studies of cultural anthropology, and the
Histoire naturelle
of Georges Buffon, the preeminent compendium of the natural world, begun in 1749.
    But modern scientists dismiss Burnet as either a silly fool or an evil force who tried to reimpose the unquestionable dogmas of scriptural authority upon the new paths of honest science. The “standard” early history of geology, Archibald Geikie’s
Founders of Geology
(1905 edition) featured Burnet’s book among the “monstrous doctrines” that infected late-seventeenth-century science. One modern textbook describes Burnet’s work as “a series of queer ideas about earth’s development,” while another dismisses the
Sacred Theory
as a “bizarre freak of pseudo-science.”
    Of course, Burnet did not operate as a modern scientist, but he faithfully followed the norms of his timefor proper residence within the magisterium of scientific inquiry. Burnet did begin by assuming that the Bible told a truthful story about the history of the earth, but he did not insist on literal accuracy. In fact, he lost his prestigious position as private confessor to King William III for espousing an allegorical interpretation of creation as described in the Book of Genesis—for he argued that God’s six “days” might represent periods of undetermined length, not literal intervals of twenty-four hours or physical episodes of one full rotation about an axis.
    Burnet accepted the scriptural account as a rough description of actual events, but he insisted upon one principle above all: the history of the earth cannot be regarded as adequately explained or properly interpreted until all events can be rendered as necessary consequences of invariable natural laws, operating with the knowable regularity recently demonstrated for gravity and other key phenomena by his dear friend Isaac Newton. Ironically, the most bizarre features of Burnet’s particular account arise from his insistence upon natural law as the source and explanation of all historical events in the earth’s history—a difficult requirement given the peculiar and cataclysmic character of several biblical tales, including universal floods and fires.
    Burnet begins, for example, by seeking a source for the water of Noah’s flood. (He greatly underestimatedthe depth and extent of the earth’s oceans, and therefore believed that present seas could not cover the mountains. “I can as soon believe,” he wrote, “that a man could be drowned in his own spittle as that the world should be deluged by the water in it.”) But Burnet then rejects, as outside his chosen magisterium of “natural” (i.e., scientific) explanation, the easiest and standard solution of his age: that God simply made the extra water by miraculous creation. For miracle, defined as divine suspension of natural law, must lie outside the compass of scientific explanation. Invoking the story of Alexander and the Gordian Knot, Burnet rejected this “easy way” as destructive of any scientific account. (According to legend, when Alexander the Great captured