Let me try to be more clear. I objected to your argument that it was an unbroken chain of identical belief from Christ to today. It is not. If you want to believe otherwise, you are believing a Roman Sanitized version of history. Your call.
Well, I will believe in Rome. As Newman in essence said, to go back into history is to cease to be Protestant.
You will not find the doctrines you find in American Evangelical Protestantism in the early CHurch. In God’s providence, he chose to send his Son in the context of a Roman and Greek culture and it is in that context the development of orthodox Christian doctrine developed.
Do you think the Early Church, the Church Fathers and the Doctrines expressed at say the first 4 Councils [Nicea 325AD, Constantinopile 381AD, Ephesus 431AD and Chalcedon 451AD], who had the same NT books as you and I do [although the NT canon itself is a process of development and defining not really codified totally until the late 4th century] had a theology as it relates to Sacraments, Ecclesiology, soteriology consistent with the Catholic Church, and for that matter, Orthodoxy, or American Evangelical Protestantism?
You will note I did not mention Christology as I have no evidence, as of yet, that you embrace any of the numerous Trinitarian and Christological heresies of the early Church, Gnosticism, Modalism, Arianism, Nestorianism, Monophysitism, etc, etc.
So again, I am curious as to your answer as you stated you did some studying of Church History.