of vessels. This fact and the context suggest, therefore, that we are to hold ourselves aloof from the kind of false teachers who, like Hymenaeus and Philetus, both deny some fundamental of the gospel and (according to 1 Tim. 1:19, 20) have also violated their conscience and lapsed into some form of unrighteousness. But Paul’s condition is more radical even than this. What we are to avoid is not so much contact with such men as their error and their evil. To purify ourselves ‘from these’ is essentially