"A binding apostolical tradition": on the Lenten fast

From The Paschal or Lent-Fast, apostolical & perpetual (1662), a sermon before King Charles II and then expanded for publication, by Peter Gunning, then Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, becoming Bishop of Chichester in 1669.  The title of the work goes on to describe "an answer to the late printed objections of the Presbyterians against the fast of Lent".  In the dedication to King Charles II - "The most Christian Catholick Defender of our Holy Faith and Church" - Gunning noted of the Easter feast and its preceding fast, "Your Majesties own Royal Ancestours have even in ancient Ages preserved here, and transmitted to posterity This Holy Feast and Fast".

This extract opens with Gunning pointing to the petition in the collect of the First Sunday in Lent following the reference to the Lord's fast in the wilderness, "Give us grace to use such abstinence":

What a lame Exception therefore have you given against the Churches excellent Prayer? But if the Church moreover in this Prayer, and in this Fast, and in some lowly degree of petitioned imitation of her Saviour, hath but imitated the piety, and followed the Doctrine of the Ancient Fathers of the Church, and been a follower of them as they were followers of Christ; then bless we God, who hath given us such a Mother, and God send her more dutifull Children. And if ye ask us, who those Ancient Fathers were, First, S. Austin:

"We are admonished to fast forty days; this the Law, whose person Moses bare; this the Prophets, whose person Elias sustained; this the Lord himself admonisheth us, who as receiving witness from the Law and the Prophets, shone forth in the midst 'twixt those two in the Mount" ...

That the Church hath shewn you any such example of changing so the Fast of Lent, as that you may be allowed by that example not to continue it a Religious Fast, is another untruth ... For we believe the tradition and practise of the Paschal or Lent-Fast to be elder then all General Councils: And do find it in the first General Council, not instituted, or commanded, where it needed not; but in plain words there supposed as a thing long before known throughout the Christian world. 

Since our Controversie is about a binding Apostolical Tradition, and no other, one certain mark of such binding Apostolical Tradition is, when the Universal Church which alwayes shall continue Apostolical (because alwayes built upon the rock and foundation which the Apostles have laid) hath never generally by disuse in any age laid it aside, This we defend of the Paschal or Lent-Fast ...

Now shew us if you can when the Paschal Fast of Lent was laid by at any time, or when it began (if not from the Apostles) or when 'twas not (though you cannot tell us the beginning.) but if you can neither, and yet cann't be silent, consider the Rule of St. Augustine so oft by him pressed against the Donatists, that such things which ever have been continued in the Church Universal, nor were at first brought in with any plenary Councel, are to be believed to have come from the Apostles: and tell us whether St. Austin did therein insufficiently, blindly and superstitiously oppose the Donatists ... The Apostles Law binds us to observe the Customs of the Churches of God (whiles the Governours of the Church continue them to be such) and so by authority Apostolical they are to be obeyed.