Nor are the revisers by any means free from doubt and misgiving on their own work. They had the “laborious task” of “deciding between the rival claims of various readings which might properly affect the translation,” and, as they tell us, “Textual criticism, as applied to the Greek New Testament, forms a special study of much intricacy and difficulty, and even now leaves room for considerable variety of opinion among competent critics.” Next they say: “the frequent inconsistencies in the authorised version have caused us much embarrassment,” and that there are “numerous passages in the authorised version in which... the studied variety adopted by the Translators of 1611 has produced a degree of inconsistency that cannot be reconciled with the principle of faithfulness.” So little are the new revisers always certain as to what god means that they provide “alternative readings in difficult or debateable passages,” and say “the notes of this last group are numerous and largely in excess of those which were admitted by our predecessors.” And with reference to the pronouns and other words in italics we are told that “some of these cases... are of singular intricacy, and make it impossible to maintain rigid uniformity.” The new revisers conclude by declaring that “through our manifold experience of its abounding difficulties we have felt more and more as we went onward that such a work can never be accomplished by organised efforts of scholarship and criticism unless assisted by divine help.” Apparently the new revisers are conscious that they did not receive this divine help in their attempt at revision, for they go on: “We know full well that defects must have their place in a work so long and so arduous as this which has now come to an end. Blemishes and imperfections there are in the noble translation which we have been called upon to revise; blemishes and imperfections will assuredly be found in our own revision... we cannot forget how often we have failed in expressing some finer shade of meaning which we recognised in the original, how often idiom has stood in the way of a perfect rendering, and how often the attempt to preserve a familiar form of words, or even a familiar cadence, has only added another perplexity to those which have already beset us.”