that what is called primitive tradition begins after the “falling away” (2 Thess. 2:3) of which the Apostle Paul warned the early church.
The apostasy had already begun to work in his day, he told them, and immediately after the days of the apostles the errors which crowd the Roman Church came in as a flood.
As Dr. Killen says in his preface to the Ancient Church
"Rites and ceremonies, of which neither Paul nor Peter ever heard, crept silently into use, and then claimed the rank of Divine institutions. Officers, for whom the primitive disciples could have found no place, and titles which to them would have been altogether unintelligible, began to challenge attention, and to be named apostolic."
---It is to these times that men appeal whenever they appeal to primitive tradition in support of doctrines and practices for which they find no warrant in the Scripture.
*And it is interesting, in this special connection, to note the fact that in the earliest times prayers for the dead, or offerings for the dead, and Sunday observance were associated together."
E.J. Waggoner