The provisions for the fourth of the series of Dudleian Lectures are as follows:

“The fourth and last lecture I would have for the maintaining, explaining, and proving the validity of the ordination of ministers or pastors of the churches, and so their administration of the sacraments or ordinances of religion as the same hath been practiced in New England, from the first beginning of it, and so continued at this day. Not that I would in any wise invalidate Episcopal Ordination, as it is commonly called and practiced in the Church of England; but I do esteem the method of ordination as practiced in Scotland, at Geneva, and among the dissenters in England, and in the churches in this country, to be very safe, Scriptural and valid; and that the great Head of the church, by his blessed spirit, hath owned, sanctified, and blessed them accordingly, and will continue to do so to the end of the World. Amen.”

The topic of Sacerdotalism is naturally involved in the terms of this Foundation.

The term “Sacerdotalism” has been defined as “the doctrine that the man who ministers in sacred things, the institution through which and the office or order in which he ministers, the acts he performs, the sacraments and rites he celebrates, are so ordained and constituted of God as to be the peculiar channels of His grace, essential to true worship, necessary to the being of religion, and the full realization of the religious life.”