His theory is that the earth is hollow, and filled
with fluid like an egg. Mixing together sundry texts from
Genesis and from the second epistle of Peter, the theological
doctrine of the "Fall," an astronomical theory regarding the
ecliptic, and various notions adapted from Descartes, he
insisted that, before sin brought on the Deluge, the earth was
of perfect mathematical form, smooth and beautiful, "like an
egg," with neither seas nor islands nor valleys nor rocks,
"with not a wrinkle, scar, or fracture," and that all creation
was equally perfect.
In the second book of his great work Burnet went still further.
As in his first book he had mixed his texts of Genesis and St.
Peter with Descartes, he now mixed the account of the Garden of
Eden in Genesis with heathen legends of the golden age, and
concluded that before the flood there was over the whole earth
perpetual spring, disturbed by no rain more severe than the
falling of the dew.
In addition to his other grounds for denying the earlier
existence of the sea, he assigned the reason that, if there had
been a sea before the Deluge, sinners would have learned to build
ships, and so, when the Deluge set in, could have saved themselves.
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