stantiation"). In them is to be found the real, but not carnal, presence of Christ (Bowmer (b), 25).
Wesley's high regard for the definite means of grace which he found in the regular observance of the Lord's Supper was the leading factor in his desire that it be celebrated more often than not. In 1764, for example, Wesley wrote: "Lose no opportunity of receiving the sacrament. All who have neglected this have suffered loss" (Parris, 63). Methodists were encouraged to attend the Anglican Church and receive communion as often as possible, even if they faced hostility from the ministers. Although Wesley believed that only ordained ministers of the Church were permitted to conduct the Lord's Supper, he was similarly convinced that many of them were heretics and unworthy of the privilege--one of several factors which would eventually widen the breach between Anglicans and Methodists (Parris, 69).
However, Wesley was not inclined to ordain many men. Indeed, it was not until as late as 1784 that Wesley began to ordain ministers for America, Scotland, and England (Tripp, 278). According to Bowmer (a), following Wesley's death, there was considerable debate regarding his inconsistencies in the ordinations and refusals to ordain ministers in the Methodist tradition (15). Wesley's allegiance to the apostolic order maintained by the Anglican Church (one of its few links to the Roman Catholic Church) seems to be the overriding factor in his theology.
As Bowmer (a) indicates, it was only with great reluctance that Wesley ordained his ministers in order that the Methodist people were able to receive the sacrament outside the domain of the Church of England (16). Bowmer further speculates that, in the last ten years of his life, Wesley had begun to make preparations for the Lord's Supper to be administered by any Methodist preacher, ordination notwithstanding, but that his death precluded the specific formulation of this con...