The Reverand Thomas Burnet died today in 1715. Though admired by Newton and referenced in the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner", Burnet's Sacred Theory of the Earth presents an idiosyncratic portrait of the world. For instance, Burnet claimed that since the oceans don't contain enough water to cover all land, the Biblical flood story implies the Earth is hollow and full of extra water.
Burnet believed the hexameron - the six-day creation - was a template of universal history. On this plan, an apocalypse in the 6000th year of the Earth will inaugurate a seventh millennial "day" of Christ's rule. (This cosmogony is at least as old as Irenaeus in the third century - see June 28).
Burnet's On the State of the Dead and of the Resurrection led the ever-skeptical Edward Gibbon to quip that far from making sense of either Revelation or the soul's immortality, Burnett had at least done a service by laying out their "inconveniences".
