But on this head we would speak no word, for were not you all, O miserable Sinners, born not in the Darkness of Heathendom, but in the burning Light of Christian England?

’Secondly, we will consider the peculiar wickedness of Parricide, and especially the Murder of a Wife.  What deed, in truth, is more heinous than that a man should slay the Parent of his own Children, the Wife he had once loved and chose out of all the world to be a Companion of his Days; the Wife who long had shared his good Fortune and his ill, who had brought him with Pain and Anguish several Tokens and Badges of Affection, the Olive Branches round about his Table?  To embrew the hands in such blood is double Murder, as it murders not only the Person slain, but kills the Happiness of the orphaned Children, depriving them of Bread, and forcing them upon wicked Ways of getting a Maintenance, which often terminate in Newgate and an ignominious death.

’Bloodthirsty men, we have said, shall not live out half their Days.  And think not that Repentance avails the Murderer.  “Hell and Damnation are never full” (Prov. xxvii. 20), and the meanest Sinner shall find a place in the Lake which burns unto Eternity with Fire and Brimstone.  Alas! your Punishment shall not finish with the Noose.  Your “end is to be burned” (Heb. vi. 8), to be burned, for the Blood that is shed cries aloud for Vengeance.’  At these words, as Pureney would relate with a smile of recollected triumph, Matthias Brinsden screamed aloud, and a shiver ran through the idle audience which came to Newgate on a Black Sunday, as to a bull-baiting.  Truly, the throng of thoughtless spectators hindered the proper solace of the Ordinary’s ministrations, and many a respectable murderer complained of the intruding mob.  But the Ordinary, otherwise minded, loved nothing so well as a packed house, and though he would invite the criminal to his private closet, and comfort his solitude with pious ejaculations, he would neither shield him from curiosity, nor tranquillise his path to the unquenchable fire.

Not only did he exercise in the pulpit a poignant and visible influence.  He boasted the confidence of many heroes.  His green old age cherished no more famous memory than the friendship of Jonathan Wild.  He had known the Great Man at his zenith; he had wrestled with him in the hour of discomfiture; he had preached for his benefit that famous sermon on the text:  ‘Hide Thy Face from my sins, and blot out all my Iniquities’; he had witnessed the hero’s awful progress from Newgate to Tyburn; he had seen him shiver at the nubbing-cheat; he had composed for him a last dying speech, which did not shame the king of thief-takers, and whose sale brought a comfortable profit to the widow.  Jonathan, on his side, had shown the Ordinary not a little condescension.  It had been his whim, on the eve of his marriage, to present Mr. Pureney with a pair of white gloves, which were treasured as a priceless relic for many a year.  And when he paid his last, forced visit to Newgate, he gave the Chaplain, for a pledge of his esteem, that famous silver staff, which he carried, as a badge of authority from the Government, the better to keep the people in awe, and favour the enterprises of his rogues.