Wesley was sick of controversial writing; and, besides, he had no time for it. Walter Sellon had leisure at his command, and had already this year published his able treatise, entitled, “The Doctrine of General Redemption considered,” 12mo, 178 pages. He was also now engaged in refuting a book hardly less horrible than the Zanchius of Augustus Toplady, namely, “A Practical Discourse of God’s Sovereignty,” 12mo, 347 pages, by Elisha Coles, a clerk to the East India Company, who died in 1688. Sellon’s book was soon issued, with the title, “A Defence of God’s Sovereignty, against the impious and horrible Aspersions cast upon it by Elisha Coles, in his practical treatise on that subject.” In his preface, he tells his readers, he “did intend to have exposed the errors and blasphemy” of Toplady’s Zanchius, but when he “found it would enlarge his work too much, and especially when he understood that Toplady had vilely slandered the Church of England,” he chose “to make it the subject of another book, which the reader might expect unless it should be done by some abler hand.”[78] Controversial war was now begun in earnest, and a severer battle was never fought. Sir Richard Hill, Augustus Toplady, and Walter Sellon were fairly in the lists, and others soon after followed. In the midst of all this, Wesley was savagely attacked in two letters, published in the _Gospel Magazine_ for 1769, entitled, “Observations on Mr. J. Wesley’s view of ‘The Scripture Doctrines of Predestination, Election, and Reprobation.’” He is accused of “inexcusable vanity”; of “impertinent quibbling”; of “jesuitical sophistry”; of holding “a scheme unscriptural and dangerous, absurd and impious”; and of “finespun reasoning worse than nothing.” The author complacently tells his readers, in conclusion, that, though he had felt himself “very resentful,” yet being “called to imitate the lovely pattern of the lowly Jesus, he had answered Wesley not with asperity, but with the meekness of wisdom.”