It must be remembered that every first generation of the slaves had come to America as captives taken in war of one tribe against another. Their languages and dialects included perhaps every language in central and southern Africa; and their unfamiliar languages made it almost impossible for the average citizen or his parson to do much in the way of preaching the Christian faith; except perhaps in the observance of the universal law of kindness. The birth of slave children, however, removed the barrier of language, for the children were taught English as their native tongue. The children therefore could be taught. All teaching of children, whether children of the master and mistress or those born as their slaves, was considered the duty of the whole family. And the teaching of the catechism and the duties of a Christian life to the slave children was as important a part of the family responsibility in a Christian home as the teaching of the children of the family itself. No clergyman of the Church would be willing to baptize a slave child unless there were responsible sponsors present who would assume the obligation to give steady Christian teaching. So it became a rule of the clergy, or most of them, that the master and mistress in the case of each such baptism must assume the obligation to give the child Christian training. The baptized children could then in early youth be permitted to attend the instruction classes which were held by the incumbent minister for them. The slave child and the master's child would share the privilege of admission to the Sacrament of the Holy Communion when each one had shown sufficient knowledge and understanding of right and wrong, and had been sufficiently instructed in "the things which a Christian should know and believe." No one knows how many or what percentage of slave children in Virginia or elsewhere were baptized, or how many became communicants because no record was kept. But there were enough baptisms to create a new problem. There was no Negro slavery in England, and it was generally understood that when a Negro slave set foot upon the soil of England he became a free man. Somehow that concept of freedom became linked in common thinking with the concept of baptism into the Christian faith; and there arose in practically every slave-holding section of the English colonies a question whether the very act of baptizing a slave child did not set him free from slavery. Because of that question many slave-owners declined to permit the baptism of their slaves until the question was settled, and consequently in every slave-owning colony it became necessary to secure a legislative enactment establishing the legal status of a baptized slave. The question arose in Virginia, and in 1667 the following act was adopted by the General Assembly: