BURNET, THOMAS (1635-1715), English divine, was born at Croft in Yorkshire about the year 1635. He was edu cated at Northallerton, and at Clare Hall, Cambridge, and became master of the Charterhouse in 1685. As master he made a noble stand against the illegal attempts to admit Andrew Popham as a pensioner of the house.
Burnet published his famous Telluris Theoria Sacra, or Sacred Theory of the Earth, in London in 1681. This work, containing a fanciful theory of the earth's structure, attracted much atten tion, and he was afterwards encouraged to issue an English trans lation, which was printed in folio, 1684-89. In 1692 he published Archaeologiae Philosophicae: sive Doctrina antique 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 the office of clerk of the closet which Archbishop Tillotson had procured for him. Of this book an English translation was published in 1729. Burnet died at the Charterhouse on Sept. 27, 171 5.
Two posthumous works appeared several years after his death—De Fide et 0fJ"iciis 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