Well, Protestantism sprang from Catholicsm, therefore, Catholicism, by your logic, is the source of Mormonism, JWism, and all manner of cults, thereby invalidating Catholisim since IT is the source of those cults.
And Protestantism sprang from the Orthodox not accepting some of un-Biblical practices of what we now know as Catholicism, so the Catholics “protested” and the two became separate factions.
So that makes Catholics the first “Protestants.”
metom:
No, not really. I clearly said in a post that European Protestantism, the 3 Classic branches 1)Anglican-Church of England, 2) Lutheran, 3) Reformed, retained much of historic Christianity. All retained the Historic Creeds of the early Church, all retained some form of Liturgical worship, all retained some theology of sacraments, etc.
In the USA, with its “free market system of Religion”, forms of Protestantism emerged in that would not resemble at all historic orthodox Christian Doctrine and it is from those groups that broke from the 3 branches of European Protestantism, formed here in the USA, from which the Mormons and JWs, various stripes of Pentecostalism, prosperty movement, health and welfare name it and claim it, etc all came from.