polity (a church's form of government) to be a matter of adiaphora (something indifferent). Methodist churches In the beginnings of the Methodist movement, adherents were instructed to receive the sacraments within the Anglican Church since the Methodists were still a movement and not as yet a separate church in England until 1805. The American Methodists soon petitioned to receive the sacraments from the local preachers who conducted worship services and revivals. The Bishop of London refused to ordain Methodist priests and deacons in the British American colonies. John Wesley, the founder of the movement, was reluctant to allow unordained preachers to administer the sacraments: Some scholars argue that in 1763, Greek Orthodox bishop Erasmus of the Diocese of Arcadia, who was visiting London at the time, consecrated John Wesley a bishop, and ordained several Methodist lay preachers as priests, including John Jones. Wesley could not openly announce his episcopal consecration without incurring the penalty of the Præmunire Act. In light of Wesley's episcopal consecration, the Methodist Church can lay a claim on apostolic succession, as understood in the traditional sense. Since John Wesley "ordained and sent forth every Methodist preacher in his day, who preached and baptized and ordained, and since every Methodist preacher who has ever been ordained as a Methodist was ordained in this direct 'succession' from Wesley, then the Methodist Church teaches that it has all the direct merits coming from apostolic succession, if any such there be." This apostolic succession is recognized by Unity Catholic Church, an independent Catholic church. Most Methodists view apostolic succession outside its high church sense. This is because Wesley believed that the offices of bishop and presbyter constituted one order, citing an ancient opinion from the Church of Alexandria; Jerome, a Church Father, wrote: "For even at Alexandria from the time of Mark the Evangelist until the episcopates of Heraclas and Dionysius the presbyters always named as bishop one of their own number chosen by themselves and set in a more exalted position, just as an army elects a general, or as deacons appoint one of themselves whom they know to be diligent and call him archdeacon. For what function, excepting ordination, belongs to a bishop that does not also belong to a presbyter?" (Letter CXLVI). John Wesley thus argued that for two centuries the succession of bishops in the Church of Alexandria, which was founded by Mark the Evangelist, was