You may wish to cite some examples because I highly disagree. To the best of my knowledge, no council, local or general, considered changing the Christian canon as accepted by custom throughout Christendom since the 4th century AD.
The Reformation continued with the NT canon, but set aside the disputed OT books that had never won full acceptance
You may be confusing different naming and divisions of the deuterocanonical OT books as being different books. The deuterocanonicals were fully accepted by the Church, East and West.
I think most Protestants agree that the Catholic Church hadn’t drifted very far during the first 300 years, and were in a good position to know what the local churches had already believed for 250+ years
The Church had the liturgy, the Eucharist, the sacraments, the exaltation of Mary as the advocata of Eve and other elements rejected by the Reformers in this period.
As for what was believed, there was a wide variety of heterodox beliefs. The Trinity was not in dispute; just the ontological issues regarding the Trinity, as well as Christology.
Judging what individual fathers considered canon it is obvious that canon grew as time progressed and varied widely among individual authors. So, neither the Church theology, Christology, or canon were in any way or form uniform to support your statement implying that local churches believed pretty much the same thing.
Logic only carries you so far, after which there is a ‘leap of faith’ - but as someone pointed out to him, there was also a leap of faith to go backwards into unbelief.
That's ridiculous. Logic can be applied to the reality. It's a tool that helps us understand what cause and effect is. Our logic can only go so far, because at some point we cannot determine cause and effect and must surrender. Nothing logically justifies a "leap of faith" nor does it prove that our ignorance is somehow enlightened with unknowable truth by doing so.
As for unbelief, it is simply a surrender to our limited ability to know, re-sizing man to his proper size without interjecting human fancy into it. It is brutally honest.
You have a more exalted view of logic than research suggests is valid. Logic is a construct, describing one way our minds interpret reality. Logic alone doesn’t allow you to drive a car. Excellent computers can’t recognize a tank in the trees with the success an 8 year old would have.
“Nothing logically justifies a “leap of faith”...” - yet you engage in leaps of faith every time you drive or walk.
As for the canon, there are a lot of good links here:
http://www.bible-researcher.com/canon.html
There is a good summary table here:
http://www.bible-researcher.com/canon5.html
“Luther’s criticism of these books will perhaps be found disgraceful and even shocking to modern Christians, but it should be pointed out that his attitude was not so shocking in the context of the late Middle Ages. Erasmus had also called into question these four books in the Annotationes to his 1516 Greek New Testament, and their canonicity was doubted by the Roman Catholic Cardinal Cajetan (Luther’s opponent at Augsburg. See Reu, Luther’s German Bible, pp. 175-176). The sad fact is, the Roman Catholic Church had never precisely drawn the boundaries of the biblical canon. It was not necessary to do so under the Roman system, in which the authority of the Scriptures was not much higher than that of tradition, popes, and councils. It was not until the Protestant Reformers began to insist upon the supreme authority of Scripture alone that a decision on the ‘disputed books’ became necessary.” - http://www.bible-researcher.com/antilegomena.html
The Gospels and Pauline epistles were accepted as scripture within years of their writing, and used in worship and for study. Consider: “15Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.”
If Peter can accept Paul’s letters as scripture, in spite of their differences, do you really think they were in dispute for 400 years?
On the contrary, unbelief, is the lack of faith in Him, placing our personal arrogant understanding as senior to His provision. It is not brutally honest, but boldly arrogant and deceiving to the person who turns any direction but to God.