scornful adjective than as a substantive noun, and was rejected as slanderous in whatever quarter it was applied” (Elizabethan Puritanism, pp. 3ff.). The terms Puritan and Puritanism stuck, though what they mean has changed over the years. Twentieth-century scholars offer various opinions on what the terms actually intend to describe. William Haller sees the “central dogma of Puritanism [as] an all-embracing determinism, theologically formulated doctrine of predestination” (The Rise of Puritanism,