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.
Badcock was one of the most notorious of all the Simeonites. Not
only was he ugly, dirty, ill-dressed, bumptious, and in every way
objectionable, but he was deformed and waddled when he walked so
that he had won a nickname which I can only reproduce by calling it
"Here's my back, and there's my back," because the lower parts of
his back emphasised themselves demonstratively as though about to
fly off in different directions like the two extreme notes in the
chord of the augmented sixth, with every step he took.
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