Now, two things made the Reverend Paul exceeding wroth. One was the issue of pirated confessions, which were “a great Cheat and Imposture upon the World,” and they would not merely forge his name but mis-spell it to boot! His is “the only true _Account_ of the Dying Criminals,” he urgently, and no doubt truly, asserts. All this touched his pocket, hence his ire, which blazed no less against the unrepentant malefactor, who--a scarce less grievous offence--touched his professional pride. He did not mince words:--“he was a Notorious and Hard-hearted Criminal,” or afflicted with brutish ignorance or of an obstinate and hardened disposition. “There is,” he would pointedly remark, “_a Lake of Brimstone, a Worm that dies not, and a Fire which shall never be quenched_. And this I must plainly tell you, that will be your dismal portion there for ever, unless you truly Repent here in time.” And after “Behaviour” in the title of his broadsheets, he would insert, in parentheses, “or rather Misbehaviour.” Most of his flock, stupid with terror, passively acquiesced in everything he said. These “Lorrain saints,” as Steele called them, received ready absolution at his hands and their reported end was most edifying. But in James Sheppard (the Jacobite), who suffered March 17, 1718, for treason, Lorrain had a most vexatious subject. A non-juring divine, “that Priest or Jesuit, or Wolf in Sheep’s clothing,” as the Rev. Paul describes him, attended the convict, and the Ordinary’s services were quite despised. The intruder, “e’en at the _Gallows_, had the Presumption to give him Publick Absolution, tho’ he visibly dy’d without Repentance.” Dr. Doran assures us that, on the way to Tyburn, Paul and his supplanter came to fisticuffs, and our Ordinary was unceremoniously kicked from the cart. One would like to believe this entertaining legend, for “the great historiographer,” as Pope and Bolingbroke sarcastically dub him, grows less in your favour the more you scan his sheets. His account of Sheppard concludes with the most fulsome professions of loyalty to the King and the Protestant Succession, for which he is ready to sacrifice his life. You note that he was charged with administering the sacrament for temporal ends, some scandal apparently of shamful traffic in the elements. There is no proof--indeed, we have nothing to go on but his own denial; but it shows the gossip whereof he was the centre. He had ingenious methods of spreading his sale. Thus he tells his readers that a fuller account of a special case will be published along with that of prisoners that go for execution to-morrow. In the case of Nathaniel Parkhurst, hanged May 20, 1715, for the murder of Count Lewis Pleuro, he actually reports the convict on the eve of his execution cracking up in advance the report which his ghostly comforter will presently publish! Strange advertisements fill up the odd corners of his broadsheets. Here he puffs a manual of devotion by himself;