Sellon, Walter
1715-1792
Anglican clergyman, of Huguenot descent. Before his ordination he was a baker and a local preacher, having met John Wesley in 1745 and shed his prejudice against Methodism. He taught at Kingswood School 1748-50. Charles Wesley enlisted his support in the 1750s against the advocates of separation from the Church. Under the patronage of the Countess of Huntingdon he held several livings, including from 1770 that of Ledsham, Yorks, but in 1770 supported Wesley in the Calvinistic controversy. He made a study of John Goodwin's Arminian writings in order to answer A.M. Toplady's Calvinistic polemics. His Answer to Aspasio Vindicated (1767) was a contribution to the controversy that surrounding James Hervey's Theron and Aspasio. At John Wesley's suggestion, he wrote A Defence of God's Sovereignty (1770) as a reply to a book by Elisha Cole first published in 1673.
- Charles Atmore, Methodist Memorial (1801), pp.381-84
- A.G. Ives, Kingswood School in Wesley's Day and Since (1970)
- A. Brown-Lawson, John Wesley and the Anglican Evangelicals of the Eighteenth Century (Bishop Auckland, 1994)