THOMAS

See also:

• BURNET
• BURNET, GILBERT (1643-1715)
• THOMAS BURNET (1635-1715)

BURNET (1635-1715)  , English divine, was born at Croft in Yorkshire about the year 1635 . He was educated at Northallerton, and at Clare Hall, Cambridge . In 1657 he was made fellow of Christ's, and in 1667 senior proctor of the university . By the interest of James, duke of Ormonde, he was chosen master of the Charterhouse in 1685, and took the degree of D.D . As master he made a noble stand against the illegal attempts to admit Andrew Popham as a pensioner of the house, strenuously opposing an order of the 26th of December 1686, addressed by James II. to the governors dispensing with the statutes for the occasion . Burnet published his famous Telluris Theoria Sacra, or Sacred Theory of the Earth,' at London in 1681 . This work, containing a fanciful theory of the earth's structure,' attracted much attention, and he was afterwards encouraged to issue an English translation, which was printed in folio, 1684-1689 . Addison commended the author in a Latin ode, but his theory was attacked by John Keill, William Whiston and Erasmus Warren, to all of whom he returned answers . His reputation obtained for him an introduction at court by Archbishop Tillotson, whom he succeeded as clerk of the closet to King William . But he suddenly marred his prospects by the publication, in 1692, of a work entitled Archaeologiae Philosophicae: sive Doctrina antiqua de Rerum Originibus, in which he treated the Mosaic account of the fall of man as an allegory . This excited a great clamour against him; and the king was obliged to remove him from his office at court . Of this book an English translation was published in 1729 .

Burnet published several other

minor works before his death, which took place at the Charterhouse on the 27th September 1715 . Two posthumous works appeared several years after his death—De Fide et Officiis Christianorum (1723), and De Statu Mortuorum et Resurgentium Tractatus (1723); in which he maintained the doctrine of a middle state, the millennium, and the limited duration of future punishment . A Life of Dr Burnet, by Heathcote, appeared in 1759 . " Which," says Samuel Johnson, " the critick ought to read for its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety " (Lives of English Poets, vol. i. p . 303) . 2 Burnet held that at the deluge the earth was crushed like an egg, the internal waters rushing out, and the fragments of shell becoming the mountains .