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.
(142) See II Peter iii, 6.
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.
The work was written with much power, and attracted universal attention.
It was translated into various languages, and called forth a multitude of supporters and opponents in all parts of Europe.

Strong men rose against it, especially in England, and among them a few dignitaries of the Church; but the Church generally hailed the work with joy.

Addison praised it in a Latin ode, and for nearly a century it exercised a strong influence upon European feeling, and aided to plant more deeply than ever the theological opinion that the earth as now existing is merely a ruin; whereas, before sin brought on the Flood, it was beautiful in its "egg-shaped form," and free from every imperfection.
A few years later came another writer of the highest standing--William Whiston, professor at Cambridge, who in 1696 published his New Theory of the Earth.

Unlike Burnet, he endeavoured to avail himself of the Newtonian idea, and brought in, to aid the geological catastrophe caused by human sin, a comet, which broke open "the fountains of the great deep." But, far more important than either of these champions, there arose in the eighteenth century, to aid in the subjection of science to theology, three men of extraordinary power--John Wesley, Adam Clarke, and Richard Watson.