Throughout its more than 250-year history, the Methodist Church has placed great significance on its observation of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper. Indeed, owing to the frequency and fervor with which John and Charles Wesley and their small society, the "Holy Club" organized by Charles at Oxford in 1728 (Bowmer (b), 24), celebrated the Lord's Supper, the group was known to some as Sacramentarians (Parris, 18; many others). The Anglican Church in John Wesley's time practiced the observance of the Lord's Supper on a quarterly frequency (if not less often); the Holy Club partook of the elements at least monthly. It is believed by some that Wesley himself took communion on average once every five days, and perhaps even daily at the times of church festivals (Parris, 18; Spivey, 190).
Despite the significant difference, Wesley, an ordained minister of the Anglican Church, never intended his efforts to be the foundation of a separate church. The early form of Methodist observance of the Lord's Supper was conducted according to the church's Book of Common Prayer, along with Wesley's "Abridgement" (Bowmer (a), 13). This link continues to be preserved in modern Methodism with the communion table being placed adjacent to the altar and communicants approaching and kneeling at the rail to receive the elements.
Wesleyan doctrine holds that the Lord's Supper is "a real means of grace in which 'all the benefits of His Passion' are, by faith effectively conveyed to men. It is a memorial of His sufferings and death, yet not a mere memorial" (Bowmer (a), 14). It is a "re-presentation" of the body and blood of Christ as spiritual nourishment (Sanders, 358). Following the beliefs of his father, Samuel, also a High Churchman, and the doctrine of the Anglican Church, Wesley declined to find the body and blood of Christ located in the elements of the sacrament as does the Roman Catholic Church (the doctrine of "transub...