having scruples

Here is a comment by Rev S Pike, who with S Hayward made up an interesting duo of London ministers in the 1750s. They held weekly lectures where members of the audience were able to submit questions about their religious experience and activities, and in 1755 they published the responses which they gave to some of those questions.

This one deals with the Christian attitude to 'diversions,' or ways of passing the time - if I feel uncomfortable about participating in a given social practice, do my scruples arise from an unnecessarily sensitive conscience, or a conscience which is being warned by God? NB, it uses the term "professor" to refer to 'someone who professes to be converted,' or claims to be a Christian.

[You can be sure that] This diversion, with every other, must certainly be evil when it unfits the soul for spiritual duties. It is readily granted that some diversions are certainly lawful; and it is as readily allowed that some diversion is really necessary: but then it is [necessary] only so far as it is suited to unbend the mind for a season from severer thought, or to relax the body to render it the more capable to perform necessary duty. Diversion is graciously allowed and designed to fit the body and mind for spiritual and natural duties.

But surely a gracious person must acknowledge the following maxim to be just: That whatsoever diversions do actually unfit the frame and spirit of the mind for devotional exercises, they so far [ie to the extent that they do so] prove themselves to be hurtful and criminal. And therefore, every person that has any regard for the power of godliness in his own soul must judge and condemn himself as guilty before God, whenever he engages in such diversions, or [engages in them] to such a degree as to unfit his soul for this communion with God.

And if every professor did seriously attend to this rule, and examine himself by this test, I doubt not but he would soon be obliged to decline this practice from his own experience.

The particular 'diversion' which was addressed in the original was playing cards, I think particularly when money was involved, but the bit I've quoted here outlines a principle which is valid across the board.

Pike and Hayward's original book, Cases of Conscience, was published in 1755. I've quoted this from the abridged version, published in 1968 by Free Presbyterian Publications (p36).