ngland people
began, some of them, to recognize in what an earthen vessel their
treasure had been borne. Already, in his earlier youth, when his vast
powers had been suddenly revealed to him and to the world, he had had
wise counsel from such men as Watts and Doddridge against some of his
perils. Watts warned him against his superstition of trusting to
"impressions" assumed to be divine; and Doddridge pronounced him "an
honest man, but weak, and a little intoxicated with popularity."[169:1]
But no human strength could stand against the adulation that everywhere
attended him. His vain conceit was continually betraying him into
indiscretions, which he was ever quick to expiate by humble
acknowledgment. At Northampton he was deeply impressed with the beauty
of holiness in Edwards and his wife; and he listened with deference to
the cautions of that wise counselor against his faith in "impressions"
and against his censorious judgments of other men as "unconverted"; but
it seemed to the pastor that his guest "liked him not so well for
opposing these things."

The faults of Whitefield were intensified to a hateful degree in some of
his associates and followers. Leaving Boston, he sent, to succeed to his
work, Gilbert Tennent, then glowing with the heat of his noted
Nottingham sermon on "An Unconverted Ministry." At once men's minds
began to be divided. On the one hand, so wise and sober a critic as
Thomas Prince, listening with severe attention, gave his strong and
unreserved approval to the preaching and demeanor of Tennent.[169:2] At
the other extreme, we have such testimony as this from Dr. Timothy
Cutler, the former rector of Yale College, now the Episcopalian minister
of Boston:

"It would be an endless attempt to describe that scene of
confusion and disturbance occasioned by him [Whitefield]: the
division of families, neighborhoods, and towns, the
contrariety of husbands and wives, the undutifulness of
children and servants, the quarrels among teachers, the
disorders of the night, the intermission of labor and
business, the neglect of husbandry and of gathering the
harvest.... In many conventicles and places of rendezvous
there has been checkered work indeed, several preaching and
several exhorting and praying at the same time, the rest
crying or laughing, yelping, sprawling, fainting, and this
revel maintained in some places many days and nights together