Burnetts Frontispiece
The frontispiece to Thomas Burnetts Telluris theoria sacra (The Sacred Theory of the Earth) may be the most comprehensive and accurate epitome ever presented in pictorial form—for it presents
both the content of Burnet's narrative and his own internal debate
about the nature of time and history (Figure 2.1).
Below the requisite border of cherubim (for Burnet's baroque
century), we see Jesus, standing atop a circle of globes, his left foot
on the beginning, his right on the culmination of our planet's
history. Above his head stands the famous statement from the Book
of Revelation: I am alpha and omega (the beginning and the end,
the first and the last). Following conventions of the watchmakers'
guild, and of eschatology (with bad old days before salvation to
the left, or sinister, side of divinity), history moves clockwise from
midnight to high noon.
We see first (under Christ's left foot) the original chaotic earth
"without form and void," a jumble of particles and darkness upon
the face of the deep. Next, following the resolution of chaos into
a series of smooth concentric layers, we note the perfect earth of
Eden's original paradise, a smooth featureless globe. But the deluge
arrives just in time to punish our sins, and the earth is next con-
sumed by a great flood (yes, the little figure just above center is
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