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It wasn't practiced because there was no printing press, only scribes, and limited copies of scripture were further limited to those who could read - reducing even further the ones who could access scripture.

Ekklesia simply means a "gathering" - a community gathering - a gathering of believers. The traditions of the apostles were recorded in Scripture. What Rome refers to as "tradition" is all of the early stuff that is valid plus all the stuff they made up - mainly in the Dark Ages through the early Middle Ages. It does not follow that if one accepts the former then one must accept the latter.

The Church of Rome invented all scores of things that had no foundation in either reality, history or tradition. The Marian doctrines are the most egregious, but certainly purgatory and confession to priests and "dividing up sin" into mortal and venial could be added to it along with a myriad of smaller issues that don't come to mind right now.

Martin Luther was God's judgment on the Church, in my view, and when the Church got off track and slipped into invention and legalism, God simply went around them - through the wit and wisdom he imparted to a German monk.

If the Church was God's doing, then so was the Reformation. The Reformation led to the Enlightenment, and the Enlightenment led to the ideas of political equality, equal justice under the law, individual liberty, etc. That all had to be God's doing, too, because it led to the founding of the United States of America, which creation surely was due to God's Providence. It's all part of the plan.

The Reformation led to the Enlightenment, and the Enlightenment led to the ideas of political equality, equal justice under the law, individual liberty, etc. That all had to be God's doing, too, because it led to the founding of the United States of America, which creation surely was due to God's Providence. It's all part of the plan.

The Enlightenment ALSO lead to the French Revolution, communism, socialism, Darwinism and a whole host of other things that I am certain that God does not look favorably upon. But I will agree that all of these ills have their genesis in the Reformation.

What Rome refers to as "tradition" is all of the early stuff that is valid plus all the stuff they made up - mainly in the Dark Ages through the early Middle Ages. It does not follow that if one accepts the former then one must accept the latter.

Made up? Please be more specific. Martin Luther was God's judgment on the Church, in my view, and when the Church got off track and slipped into invention and legalism, God simply went around them - through the wit and wisdom he imparted to a German monk.

If this were so, then he would have succeeded in establishing only one church. Several years after he had started the reformation, Luther surveyed the damage that Sola Scriptura, and its accompanying individual interpretation of Holy Scripture, had done to his movement. Shards had splintered off from his Lutheran church, with Munzer going this way, Calvin going that way, Zwingli going another way, and with all scattering the flocks.
"He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters." Matthew 12:30, Luke 11:23

Immediately the errors of Protestantism emerged, for who did the scattering? The damage of individual interpretation of Holy Scripture had taken its toll immediately. Luther sounded as if he lamented what he had started when he made the following remarks,

"This one will not hear of Baptism, and that one denies the sacrament, another puts a world between this and the last day: some teach that Christ is not God, some say this, some say that: there are as many sects and creeds as there are heads. No yokel is so rude but when he has dreams and fancies, he thinks himself inspired by the Holy Ghost and must be a prophet."
De Wette III, 61. quoted in O'Hare, THE FACTS ABOUT LUTHER, 208.

Luther admitted that the Catholic Church was the true Church.

"Accordingly, we concede to the papacy that they sit in the true Church, possessing the office instituted by Christ and inherited from the apostles, to teach, baptize, administer the sacrament, absolve, ordain, etc., just as the Jews sat in their synagogues or assemblies and were the regularly established priesthood and authority of the Church. We admit all this and do not attack the office, although they are not willing to admit as much for us; yea, we confess that we have received these things from them, even as Christ by birth descended from the Jews and the apostles obtained the Scriptures from them."
Sermon for the Sunday after Christ’s Ascension; John 15:26-16:4 (2nd sermon), page 265, paragraph 28, 1522.