Just to play devil's advocate here. How would you counter that quote if what was meant by it was this. We are not Protestants because we didn't break off from Rome. We were never part of the Roman church, we were always independant of the Roman church? There fore I am not a Protestant.
You sprang forth from either the Roman Catholic church or the "Protest" with gave us "Protestanism." If not this, see the final paragraph. THE church was the Roman Catholic church, until Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses of 1517. Luther didn't mean to start a "Reformation," but thanks to the printing press (the mass production of the Luther's "protest" translated from Latin to German in which even the fairly illiterate laymen could read) and the churches heretical teaching that one's soul can be purchased (with money) out of the mythical purgatory, the Reformation began.
If you are not a Protestant, then you're even more the imagination of man, like Islam, Buddism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Wiccans, New Agers, LDS, WCC, WCOTC, NoI, British-Israelism, NoY (Black Hebrew Israelites), practitioner of voodoo, etc.