ABSTRACT
John Wesley’s visits to Newcastle from May 1742 gathered crowds of thousands; the city became known, with London and Bristol, as one of the centres of the new religious movement. Charles Avison distanced himself from the movement, refuting with some force a suggestion that his friend, the vicar of Newcastle, John Brown, had been ‘tinged with the cloud of Methodism’. However, his sons had strong connections with Methodism and Avison’s own Essay on Musical Expression appears to have prompted Wesley’s own tract: Thoughts on the Power of Music.
