Mountains and oceans presented Thomas Burnet (1635–1715) with a problem that a comparison of ancient stories could not solve. If the earth had been overwhelmed by the Flood, where had all the water come from, and how had the catastrophe produced the world people inhabited? In The Sacred Theory of the Earth, first published in Latin in 1681, he proposed an early globe with a smooth outer crust above enormous reserves of water. The breaking of that crust released the waters and left the ruined surface visible in the present landscape.
Burnet accepted the religious significance of the catastrophe while seeking a physical account of how it occurred. The earth’s formation had to prepare the conditions for its later destruction. Mountains became broken remains of an earlier surface, and the arrangement of land and sea belonged to the same explanation. Genesis could be read alongside an inquiry into the history of nature.
That ambition exposed his account to two kinds of criticism. Readers could dispute whether he had interpreted Scripture correctly, but they could also ask whether the proposed physical causes would work. A religious commitment could explain why Burnet sought the Flood in the landscape without establishing that his model of the earth was sound. The appeal to natural causes gave his audience grounds for testing the reconstruction on its own terms.
His later treatment of the earliest biblical narratives raised still more sensitive questions. Burnet offered the earth theory to English readers but retained Latin for discussions he considered more hazardous. The distinction shows an author aware that different audiences might draw different consequences from his work. It did not keep those consequences under his control. An attempt to explain sacred history could give later readers reasons to reconsider how literally that history should be understood.