I should like to ask Mr.Kelly if he believes that every person who is immersed, is buried into death, spiritually, with Christ, or is actually dead to sin forever; or, whether it is only a profession of one's hope and intention.

For we have all known some, who had been buried in water, that did not prove to have died unto sin." _Mr.K._ Of course it is a symbol; and all we insist on is, that Paul must have had immersion in mind, as the form of baptism, when he spoke of being buried by baptism.
_Mr.M._ When Paul says, "I am crucified with Christ," do you suppose that the idea of a cross was in his mind?
Did he intimate that sanctification is effected by a piece of wood, with a transverse beam, used as a gibbet?
Or did he simply mean, I am dead to the world, and the world is dead to me, yea, and put to death (not merely dying in a natural way), through the power of the Saviour's sufferings and death on my behalf?
The burial of Christ, following his death for sin, and so completing the idea of dying, is enough to have suggested the figure, I think, of our being not only dead with Christ, but buried with him, by a Christian profession; that is, we utterly cease from the world and sin, professedly, as Christ not only died, but went into the tomb.

But what does "risen" refer to in that passage,--the water or death?
--"from whence also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God." _Mr.M._ Why, how do you understand it?
_Mr.K._ I prefer, if you please, that you should answer.

Many understand it thus: "You are buried in water, to denote death to sin; you are lifted up out of the water (as Christ was lifted up by the Baptist), to live a new life." If this be so, what is "the operation of God," which is spoken of there?
Does it need any such "operation" for an immersed person to rise out of the water?
No, my dear sir, our interpretation makes plain and thorough work of the whole passage.

Our idea of that controverted passage (your great proof-text) is this: You, Christian professors, were, all of you, baptized, on profession of your faith;--when you made a Christian profession, you signified by it your dying unto sin, as Christ died for it, so that, I may say, you were dead and buried to sin.