The Wesleyan Methodists in Whitford now felt themselves at liberty to allow their smouldering animosity against Powell to break forth openly, for he had seceded from the Society. Some said he had been expelled from it, but this was not true, although there was little doubt that, at the next Conference, his conduct and doctrine would have been severely reprehended; and, probably, he would have been required publicly to recant them on pain of expulsion. Should this be the case, those who knew David Powell had little difficulty in prophesying the issue. However, all speculations as to his probable behaviour under the reproof of Conference were rendered vain by the preacher's voluntarily withdrawing himself from the "bonds of the Society," as he phrased it. Then broke forth the hostile sentiments of the Whitford Wesleyans against this rash and innovating preacher. Unfavourable opinions of him, which had been concealed, or only dimly expressed, were now declared openly. He was an Antinomian; he had fallen away from the doctrines of Assurance and Christian Perfection; he had brought scandal on large bodies of sober, serious persons, by encouraging wild and extravagant manifestations among his hearers; his exhortations were calculated to do harm, inasmuch as he preached a doctrine of asceticism and self-renunciation, which, if followed, would have the most inconvenient consequences. That some of these accusations--as, for example, that of Antinomianism, and that of too extreme self-mortification--were somewhat incompatible with each other, was no impediment to their being heaped simultaneously on David Powell. The strongest disapprobation of his sayings and doings was expressed by that select body of citizens who attended at the little Wesleyan chapel. And yet there was, perhaps, less bitterness in this open opposition to him than had been felt towards him during the last days of his ministration in Whitford. So long as David Powell was their preacher, approved--or, at least, not disapproved--by Conference, a struggle went on in some minds to reconcile his teaching with their practice, which was an irritating and unsatisfactory state of things, since the struggle in most cases was not so much to modify their practice, in order to bring it into harmony with his precepts, as ingeniously to interpret his precepts so that they should not too flagrantly accuse their practice. But now that it was competent to the stanchest Methodist to reject Powell's authority altogether, these unprofitable efforts ceased, and with them a good deal of resentment. The chorus of openly-expressed hostility to the preacher, which, I have said, made itself heard in Whitford, arose, in a great measure, from the common delight in declaring, where some circumstances unforeseen by the world in general comes to pass, that we perceived all along how matters would go, and knew our neighbour to be a very different fellow from what you took him to be.