THE SACRED THEORY OF THE EARTH (or Telluris Theoria Sacra) CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGINAL OF THE EARTH AND OF ALL THE GENERAL CHANGES WHICH IT HAS ALREADY UNDERGONE OR IS TO UNDERGO TILL THE CONSUMMATION OF ALL THINGS Believed in the truth of the Biblical Genesis, Thomas Burnet (1635-1715) an English theologian and writer on cosmogony, was motivated by a desire to understand and explain the origin of the world’s landscapes, its oceans and mountains. It was a speculative cosmogony, in which Burnet suggested a hollow earth with most of the water inside until Noah's Flood, at which time mountains and oceans appeared.