Romans 6:4

4. Therefore Since we die, a cognate burial must follow. The faith which precedes baptism produces a death; the holiness which should follow is a newness of life, a resurrection.

Buried… by baptism Where our regenerating faith is a death, and our sanctified new life is a resurrection, what should be the fitting burial between the two? Obviously, as said in Romans 6:2, our baptism consecrating us into Christ, embodying us into his mystical body the Church, is the burial. Faith insures our mystical death, baptism our mystical burial, sanctification our mystical resurrection.

This mystical burial would be accomplished with equal completeness whether the rite of baptism were performed by affusion or immersion. For, 1. Christ was not buried at all, but temporarily deposited in a new tomb preparatory to burial. 2. A burial is as well symbolized by affusion, picturing the covering over of the body, as by immersion. The amount of water poured upon the body can make no difference; for in Rome, whither this epistle was sent, a handful of dust thrice flung upon a corpse was held to be a legal ritual burial. So in the parallel passage, Colossians 2:11-12, so minute a rite as circumcision is the figure of an entire “putting off the body of the sins of the flesh.” 3. Immersion, even if it represented burial, does not symbolize the outpoured baptism of the Spirit. Affusion represents both.