The Way of all Flesh by Samuel Butler

On his return to Cambridge in the May term of 1858, Ernest and a few other friends who were also intended for orders came to the conclusion that they must now take a more serious view of their position. They therefore attended chapel more regularly than hitherto, and held evening meetings of a somewhat furtive character, at which they would study the New Testament. They even began to commit the Epistles of St. Paul to memory in the original Greek. They got up Beveridge on the Thirty-nine Articles, and Pearson on the Creed; in their hours of recreation they read More's Mystery of Godliness, which Ernest thought was charming, and Taylor's Holy Living and Dying, which also impressed him deeply, through what he thought was the splendour of its language. They handed themselves over to the guidance of Dean Alford's notes on the Greek Testament, which made Ernest better understand what was meant by "difficulties," but also made him feel how shallow and impotent were the conclusions arrived at by German neologians, with whose works, being innocent of German, he was not otherwise acquainted. Some of the friends who joined him in these pursuits were Johnians, and the meetings were often held within the walls of St. John's.

I do not know how tidings of these furtive gatherings had reached the Simeonites, but they must have come round to them in some way, for they had not been continued many weeks before a circular was sent to each of the young men who attended them, informing them that the Rev. Gideon Hawke, a well-known London Evangelical preacher, whose sermons were then much talked of, was about to visit his young friend Badcock of St. John's, and would be glad to say a few words to any who might wish to hear them, in Badcock's rooms on a certain evening in May.