scruple-shop

scruple +‎ shop. Originally applied derogatorily by Oxford students to a particular group of seven Presbyterian ministers who established weekly meetings to discuss questions of conscience in Oxford in 1646.

scruple-shop (plural scruple-shops)

1. (obsolete) a place where religious matters are debated, particularly with the aim of relieving participants of their scruples of conscience
   • 1771, John Wesley, Works, volume 2, page 129:

     The cure for diseased consciences is not to be found in a “scruple shop,” but in the love and care of the great Physician.

   • 1820, [Charles Robert Maturin], Melmoth the Wanderer: A Tale. […], volume IV, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Company, and Hurst, Robinson, and Co., […], →OCLC, page 223:

     Elinor, on the other hand, bred up amid a clamour of perpetual contention,—for the house of her mother’s family, in which her first years had been passed, was, in the language of the profane of those times, a scruple-shop, where the godly of all denominations held their conferences of contradiction,—had her mind early awakened to differences of opinion, and opposition of principle.

   • 1904, James Wells, The Life of James Hood Wilson, D.D., page 157:

     Others are standing at the cross-roads of duty, and are perplexed with interesting questions of casuistry. One of the great divines of the seventeenth century was said to “keep a scruple-shop.” The Barclay had “a scruple-shop,” and the business done in it was considerable.

   • 1945, A. C. Hill, Democratic Realism, page 132:

     The world is not a scruple shop, said Carlyle; and Cornewall Lewis could speak of Government as a rough business in which they who practise it cannot always adhere to the morals of the classroom.