How are we to decide without external evidence which is the correct form? Even supposing we know that the first two are out of the question, and why they are so, it is very difficult on internal grounds alone to decide between the other three. Lachmann, who did not know of (5), decided in favour of (4). But so does Tischendorf, Weizsäcker, and Weiss, the latter giving as his reason for doing so that (5), τῶν ἁγίων, is explanatory of (4), πάντων, which is manifestly too general, and that (3) is the result of a combination of these two. On the other hand, Tregelles and Westcott and Hort favour (5), without so much as mentioning (4) in their margin; while Bousset, the latest expositor of the Apocalypse, regards (3) as the correct reading, and thinks that in all probability both (4) and (5) are due to a transcriptional error. Who is to decide when doctors disagree? Manifestly one might argue on quite as good if not better grounds than those of Weiss to the very opposite conclusion—viz. that a later writer who wished the Apocalypse, and with it the New Testament, to conclude with as comprehensive a benediction as possible, substituted the words “Grace be with all” in place of the restricted and somewhat strange expression “Grace be with the saints.” I did not observe that Bousset still defends the third form when I said in the first edition of this work that this reading does not fall to be considered at all. But my reason for saying so was not “because this form proves to be a combination of the other two,” or “because the authorities for it are later,” but because it could be shown that its supporters follow a corrected text in other places as well as this; and I concluded with observing that the decision between (4) and (5) could not be made to depend solely on internal criteria either, but depended on the decision come to regarding the general relationship between the witnesses that support each one, in this instance between A, as supporting (4), and א, as supporting (5). (1) It may be stated here, merely by way of comment, that the first form of the benediction, “with you all,” was clearly translated into Greek by Erasmus from his Latin Bible, without the authority of a single Greek manuscript. But in spite of this, it is still propagated in the _textus receptus_ by the English Bible Society, and even in the last revision of Luther’s German Bible it was allowed to stand without demur. The English Authorised Version had it in this form, but the Revised Version adopts the fifth form “with the saints,” and puts (4) in the margin, with a note to the effect that “two ancient authorities read ‘with all.’”