The following is taken from 4th century Christian apologist and theologian Epiphanius of Salamis, and highlights the importance of sacred tradition in the early Church:
6,4 However, none of the sacred words need an allegorical interpretation of their meaning; they need examination, and the perception to understand the force of each proposition. (5) But tradition must be used too, for not everything is available from the sacred scripture. Thus the holy apostles handed some things down in scriptures but some in traditions, as St. Paul says, “As I delivered the tradition to you,”23 and elsewhere, “So I teach, and so I have delivered the tradition in the churches,”24 and, “If ye keep the tradition in memory, unless ye have believed in vain.”25 (6) God’s holy apostles, then, gave God’s holy church the tradition that it is sinful to change one’s mind and marry after vowing virginity. And yet the apostle wrote, “If the virgin marry she hath not sinned.”26 (7)27 How can the one agree with the other? By that virgin he does not mean the one who had made a vow to God, but < the one on whom* >virginity has been forced by the scarcity, at that particular time, of men who believe in Christ.
24 Cf. 1 Cor 11:2; 7:17.
25 1 Cor 15:2.
26 Cf. 1 Cor 7:36. (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies: The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis Books II and III. De Fide, translated by Frank Williams [Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands, Second, revised edition], Volume 79, 61. Against Apostolics, p. 121 https://archive.org/details/EpiphaniusPanarionBksIIIII1; bold emphasis)
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