Meanwhile the ministers of Geneva had been urging decision about the question of discipline and excommunication; and the murmurs against them grew stronger. The Council was believed to be too responsive to the pleadings of the pastors, and a stormy meeting of the General Council (Nov. 25th) revealed the smouldering discontent. On the 4th of January (1538) the Councils of Geneva rejected entirely the proposals to institute a discipline which would protect the profanation of the Lord's Table, by resolving that the Holy Supper was to be refused to no person seeking to partake. On the 3rd of February, at the annual election of magistrates, four Syndics were chosen who were known to be the most resolute opponents of Calvin and of Farel. The new Council did not at first show itself hostile to the preachers: their earliest minutes are rather deferential. But a large part of the citizens were violently opposed to the preachers; the Syndics were their enemies: collision was bound to come sooner or later. It was at this stage that a proposal from Bern brought matters to a crisis. The city contained many inhabitants who had been somewhat unwillingly dragged along the path of Reformation. Those who clung to the old faith were reinforced by others who had supported the Reformation simply as a means of freeing the city from the rule of the Prince Bishop, and who had no sympathy with the religious movement. The city had long been divided into two parties, and the old differences reappeared as soon as the city declared itself Protestant. The malcontents took advantage of everything that could assist them to stay the tide of Reformation and hamper the work of the ministers. They patronised the Anabaptists when they appeared in Geneva; they supported the accusation brought against Farel and Calvin by Pierre Caroli, that they were Arians because they refused to use the Athanasian Creed; above all, they declared that they stood for liberty, and called themselves Libertines. When Bern interfered, they hastened to support its ecclesiastical suggestions.