Laws to this effect were passed in some of the colonies. The Carolina Fundamental Constitutions of 1669 had provided that it should be lawful for slaves to become members of any church or religious profession as if they were freemen, but that every owner should have absolute power and authority over his slaves regardless of their opinion or religion.[1029] But by the so-called “Church Act” of 1705 South Carolina showed itself averse to the policy advocated in the Constitutions of 1669, and decreed that the register of a parish should except negro and Indian slaves from the entries of births, christenings, marriages and burials.[1030] The law suited the times and was accordingly followed.[1031] But in 1712, in order to correct the popular misconception that a Christianized slave was by law free, an act was passed to the effect that baptism of slaves did not confer freedom upon them.[1032] As early as 1655, the Virginia assembly had voted that Indian servants should be educated and brought up in the Christian faith.[1033] Yet the idea that baptism conferred freedom upon a slave even then existed in the colony, since one of the reasons given for the disallowance of the sale of an Indian boy by “The Kinge of Waineoke” to Elizabeth Short in 1659 was that the boy was desirous of baptism.[1034] The above action of the legislature probably contributed to the enactment of the law of 1667 which decreed that the baptism of a slave did not confer freedom upon him or in any way change his condition. The act naively declared the reason for this legislative action to be that masters freed from this doubt might the more carefully encourage the propagation of Christianity by permitting the conversion of slaves.[1035] The act of 1670, when slaves were for the first time legally designated as such in Virginia, decreed that freedom resulting from Christianity was limited to servants imported by shipping. Consequently Indian servants or slaves, since they generally came into the colony by land, were not eligible to become freemen by the provision.[1036] The act of 1670 was repealed in 1682 and a new act removed the possibility of conversion to Christianity conferring freedom upon any slaves, negro, mulatto or Indian, by decreeing that whether converted to Christianity before or after being brought to the colony, they should remain slaves.[1037] Finally, in 1712, Virginia passed a law requiring that the parents of free-born children and the owners of slave-born children, within twenty days after the birth of a child, should give notice in writing of the birth, with name and sex, the names of the parents of a free-born child, and the name of the owner of a slave-born child. The death of a slave was to be reported to the minister of the parish in the same way, and the minister was required to keep a record of all births and deaths in his parish.[1038] Virginia parish registers after this date contain records of the death of Indian slaves.[1039] Maryland, also, by