Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER TWO
Thomas Burnet's
Battleground of Time
Burnetts Frontispiece
The frontispiece to Thomas Burnetts
Telluris theoria sacra (The Sacred
Theory of the Earth)
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
(Figure 2.1).
Below the requisite border of cherubim (for Burnet's baroque century), we
see Jesus, standing atop a circle of globes, his left foot on the beginning, his
right on the culmination of our planet's history. Above his head stands the
famous statement from the Book of Revelation: I am alpha and omega (the
beginning and the end, the first and the last). Following conventions of the
watchmakers' guild, and of eschatology (with bad old days before salvation
to the left, or sinister, side of divinity), history moves clockwise from
midnight to high noon.
We see first (under Christ's left foot) the original chaotic earth "without form
and void," a jumble of particles and darkness upon the face of the deep. Next,
following the resolution of chaos into a series of smooth concentric layers,
we note the perfect earth of Eden's original paradise, a smooth featureless
globe. But the deluge arrives just in time to punish our sins, and the earth is
next con- sumed by a great flood (yes, the little figure just above center is
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