Replies

"Where do you Protestants get these ideas?"
Eph. 4:11-13, 2 Tim. 2:2, 15, 3:15-17, for starters.

Now I would ask you, where in the scriptures do you find anything close to this?

"both taught that The Church was defined as a group of Christians,laity and priests and deacons, headed by a bishop (they actually use that word) in succession from an Apostle who stood in the assembly in "the place of Christ" and who the people are instructed to respect and obey in all things, gathered around the Holy Eucharist."

The closest you will come is Paul's instruction to Timothy, Pastor of the assembly at Ephesus (not an Apostle) that lays out the requirements for overseer and deacon, however, Timothy was the overseer and not in Apostolic succession, neither was James, pastor of the Jerusalem assembly and half-brother of Jesus or Jude, another half-brother of Jesus or Titus, the pastor of the assembly at Crete. If your quotation is correct for the church you would have thought one of the letters instructing the churches concerning their government would have made it into the canon some 250 years later, especially with all of the trouble the churches were having with controls. The only mention of any instruction or rule that is able to bring a person to perfection is the inspired Word of God as it illumines the mind and heart of the believer by the Holy Spirit.

Read the Letters of +Ignatius of Antioch to the Smyrneans for starters, then try his letters to +John; they are all available online. Are they scripture? No. Were they written under the tutelage of an Apostle? Yes.

Since the people who determined that +Paul's epistles were to be included in the canon of scripture were bishops of The Church, why do you suppose they didn't just close up shop and set up independant protestant type assemblies right then if they had been so very wrong in their ecclesiology for the previous 400 years?