←1728
←1728
This was the plan of Mr. Robinson of Leicester, in his extensive sphere. His ‘Confirmation season’ (his biographer informs us) ‘was one he particularly valued, and had reason to esteem as his choicest seed-time. He prepared his congregation for it by sermons. He collected the young people, arranged their names, insisted on their regular attendance as a condition for giving them a certificate, and addressed a sort of family lecture to them on the Church Catechism, which he accompanied with solemn and earnest prayer during five or six weeks before the bishop appeared. In this interval, he would talk with some of them familiarly, but seriously, in small parties; with some separately in his study; to all he made a present of his excellent little tract on the subject: to all he gave special and appropriate exhortations from the pulpit; to all he showed himself the faithful shepherd, leading his flock with great solemnity on the morning of the service, praying, exhorting, and at length presenting them with his own hands to his superior, and to his superior’s Lord.’ Life, pp. 335, 336.