One could extend your argument and conclude that the Reformation was simply an earlier form of the same Modernism or Restorationism that keeps surfacing in each subsequent generation, ever changing, stumbling, haply feeling in the dark, searching to create or restore and authentic Christian faith and thereby declare itself a legitimate heir of the Jewish Apostles. Mormons, Pentecostals, Adventists, Fundamentalists, Evangelicals, NeoEvangelicals, PostEvangelicals, etc., etc. ...
Or one could simply believe, as a little child, that the Messiah is precisely who he said he is; that he built his church upon Peter, the other Jewish apostles and prophets, with himself as the chief cornerstone, and that the one holy catholic apostolic church has overcome against the gates of hell since the First Century. To imagine the church failed and was overcome for over a thousand years ... well there have to be some words from certain of your own poets for that position.
I don’t buy the part about the Reformation. They groups that went bad always had the good ones leave, and form some new thing with a different abbreviation that is good. Good as in not accepting some of the terrible stuff. I don’t see why that can’t just go on like it has been, it seems viable. It might get really really small, but then the Church might get really small too. But so far, the good ones are the ones that grow until they go bad, and then it splits with good ones leaving and the bad ones who stayed shrinking.
Freegards