B. T.

Meaning

B. T. is an unexplained closing siglum in the Second Response printed in 1661. The closing sentence says that “our brotherhood” has communicated this without payment, then directs the recipients to present themselves again in the order at St Peter’s on Christ’s day, after which B. T. will also follow them. This is a claim about the brotherhood’s disclosure; it does not by itself identify the response’s speaker or establish an otherwise unprinted collective “we.” The initials are the subject of the promised consequence, but their meaning is not supplied. The English leaves them unchanged. Note n239 takes Christ’s day as Christmas Day but identifies no particular church or city for St Peter’s. Neither the initials nor the first-person voice should be expanded into a doctrine, substance, known individual or authorship shared with the anonymous 1619 treatise.