He delivered his justly celebrated SPITAL SERMON in the accustomed
place, Christ-Church, Newgate Street, Easter Tuesday, 1800, before his
friend, Harvey Christian Combe, Esq., M.P., the celebrated brewer,
then Lord Mayor. "Before the service begun," says one of his friends,
"I went into the vestry, and found Dr. Parr seated, with pipes and
tobacco placed before him on the table. He evidently felt the
importance of the occasion, but felt, at the same time, a confidence
in his own powers. When he ascended the pulpit, a profound silence
prevailed. The sermon occupied nearly an hour and a quarter in the
delivery; and in allusion to its extreme length, it was remarked by a
lady, who had been asked her opinion of it, "enough there is, and more
than enough"--the first words of its first sentence,--a _bon mot_ he
is said to have received with good humour. As he and the Lord Mayor
were coming out of the church, the latter, albeit unused to the
facetious mode, "Well," said Dr. Parr to him, always anxious for
well-merited praise, "how did you like the sermon? Let me have the
suffrage of your strong and honest understanding." "Why, Doctor,"
returned his lordship, "there were four things in your sermon I did
_not_ like to hear." "State them," replied Parr, eagerly. "Why, to
speak frankly, then," said Combe, "they were the quarters of the
church clock, which struck four times before you had finished it." "I
once saw, lying in the Chapter Coffee-house," says Dyer, in a letter
printed in Parriana, "the Doctor's _Spital Sermon_, with a comical
caricature of him, in the pulpit, preaching and smoking at the same
time, with _ex fumo dare lucem_ issuing from his mouth."