holding faith and a good conscience; which some having thrust away made a shipwreck concerning the faith;

 (ii) Gnosticism was concerned with this long series of emanations. It gave to each of them a biography and a pedigree and an importance in the chain between God and men. These gnostics were concerned with "endless genealogies" ( 1 Timothy 1:4). They went in for "godless and silly myths" about them ( 1 Timothy 4:7). They turned their ears away from the truth to myths ( 2 Timothy 4:4). They dealt in fables like the Jewish myths ( Titus 1:14). Worst of all, they thought in terms of two gods and of Jesus as one of a whole series of mediators between God and man; whereas "there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" ( 1 Timothy 2:5). There is only one King of ages, immortal, invisible, there is only one God ( 1 Timothy 1:17). Christianity had to repudiate a religion which took their unique place from God and from Jesus Christ. 