All the surrounding towns, and the coast eastward to Maine, and the interior as far as Northampton, and the Connecticut towns along the road to New York, were wonderfully aroused by the preaching, which, according to the testimony of two nations and all grades of society, must have been of unequaled power over the feelings.
Not only the clergy, including the few Church of England missionaries, but the colleges and the magistrates delighted to honor him.

Belcher, the royal governor at Boston, fairly slobbered over him, with tears and embraces and kisses; and the devout Governor Talcott, at New Haven, gave God thanks, after listening to the great preacher, "for such refreshings on the way to our rest." So he was sped on his way back to the South.
Relieved thus of the glamor of his presence, the New England 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.